Transfering Windows onto M.2?

[Jonah321]

Hi There, I am looking at buying a M.2 SSD, and I am unfamiliar with the process of transfering just windows onto the M.2. My main questions are, 

1. Is there a way to transfer JUST windows, and then manually select later on what you would like to put on the M.2?

2. If not, how do I completely re install windows, and majority of my programs on my M.2?

 

Also, My current hard drive is a Tobisha SSHD, 1 TB, and I am looking at buying a 500 GB Samsung 960 Evo M.2 SSD.

[Mira Yurizaki]

9 minutes ago, Jonah321 said:

Hi There, I am looking at buying a M.2 SSD, and I am unfamiliar with the process of transfering just windows onto the M.2. My main questions are, 

1. Is there a way to transfer JUST windows, and then manually select later on what you would like to put on the M.2?

No. While there are people here who would strongly recommend not doing it, you can clone your OS drive over to the SSD.

 

They claim you'll have problems later down the road (the one that gets me is drivers... but if you're cloning to the same system, why would drivers be a problem?), but I've cloned a number of times without problem. And then they claim I must be a lucky person. If cloning 6+ times without problems when I should seemingly always get a problem, I should've bought a lottery ticket...

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2. If not, how do I completely re install windows, and majority of my programs on my M.2?

The same way you install Windows and your apps on any computer. If you want to import your settings though, it's in %APPDATA% (enter that in the File Explorer, it'll take you to the right place). So after you install your programs, but before you open up any of them, you can copy and paste the contents over and things usually act as though nothing happened.

 

Other settings and data may reside in your "My Documents" folder.

 

[Sir Asvald]

Best practise is to do a reinstall to avoid any issues that may occur later down the line. What I'd suggest you do, copy all your files that you need and store it onto an external drive and the reinstall Windows again.

[GoodBytes]

Drive Cloning you don't have good error correction and error can occur and you risk, and it does happen, that the clone process end up with a broken experience.

 

The proper way is to an image of the HDD/SSD, and deploy that Image on the HDD/SSD. But the process is usually more time consuming then doing a clean install for most people. Imaging of drive is best for multiple computer with identical specs deployment.