Can I set up Windows recovery to install to SSD direct?

[ads295]

Hello AT geeks

I have a laptop that is under warranty. Due to desperately wanting an SSD over spinning rust, I chose to remove my optical drive and put in a caddy, thus preserving the 3 year warranty. The SSD is in, I booted through the HDD and initialised it as a GUID drive (as opposed to MBR). Created a full size NTFS partition (it's only a 128GB drive) without assigning a drive letter (thought it doesn't matter).

Now: how can I choose a drive when I'm booting from the recovery drive, to install Windows 10 to? I created the recovery drive (USB) when I bought the laptop using Acer's software. Went to "Restore from Recovery drive" and it simply asked me if I wanted a full erase or a secure full erase.

How can I install from the recovery drive to the SSD directly? I have too much on the HDD boot drive to clone it directly to the SSD, and it seems stupid to have to back up my data, use recovery for a fresh Win10 install on the HDD, and THEN clone it to the SSD before re-installing the other stuff.

I looked through a lot of pages before coming here, so fingers crossed it can actually be done!

Thank you.

 

[VirtualLarry]

It seems like you have an existing primary HDD, with the OS and the recovery partition on it, and you added an SSD in place of an optical drive, and you are asking how to use the recovery partition on the HDD to use it to install the OS onto the SSD? I don't think that it works like that.

I would use the recovery image, that you made on a USB stick, and plug in ONLY the SSD, and then boot off of the stick, and use it to recover to the SSD (as the only / primary drive).

Then, after the OS is installed, configured, and updated, would I plug the HDD back in, which presumably would be used only as a data drive at that point.

 

[ads295]

The primary HDD does not have a recovery partition and thus I had no intentions of doing what you're suggesting. I built the USB drive recovery a few months ago when I'd just bought the laptop.
I was going to put this in my original post but didn't - that my primary HDD cannot be unplugged since getting to it will break those stickers and void warranty.

So I want to install from USB to SSD. What are the "markers" for the primary HDD that cause it to be selected by default? Or will assigning a drive letter help me get a choice during Win10 recovery?

 

[XavierMace]

A 128Gb drive is likely too small to work with your OEM's recovery disk.

 

[Billb2]

The recovery procedure is just that - recovery. It isn't an install the OS procedure. You need a Windows 10 Install Disk, a Win 10 that matches your laptop (OEM Acer) or you key won't work.

 

[deustroop]

Ensure that windows recognizes the new drive, then strip out third party apps and save any data from the HDD elsewhere then clone the HDD.

 

[ads295]

A 128Gb drive is likely too small to work with your OEM's recovery disk.

It's 128GB, and the recovery disk drive is 16GB...

The recovery procedure is just that - recovery. It isn't an install the OS procedure. You need a Windows 10 Install Disk, a Win 10 that matches your laptop (OEM Acer) or you key won't work.

Hmmm. But given that it does put the OS back in anew (Win10 says options like "system reset" would not have been available if I hadn't chosen to backup system files when creating the recovery disk) is it not possible to select just a different drive before commencing?

Ensure that windows recognizes the new drive, then strip out third party apps and save any data from the HDD elsewhere then clone the HDD.

Just what I'm looking to avoid, there's about 200GB of data on the HDD... This is why I made this post.

 

[Billb2]

Windows 10 restore just copies critical Windows files to your existing (boken Win 10 install), It's not a complete remove and reinstall.

Think about it. if you could do what you want there' would never be a reason to buy an OS from Microsoft- build/buy a new computer and you would just "restore" Win 10 to it.

 

[deustroop]

The options appear to be that you must now buy a copy of windows, to install on the ssd from a usb drive, or having bought a puny ssd, buy a bigger size so you can clone the HDD.

 

[ads295]

Windows 10 restore just copies critical Windows files to your existing (boken Win 10 install), It's not a complete remove and reinstall.

Think about it. if you could do what you want there' would never be a reason to buy an OS from Microsoft- build/buy a new computer and you would just "restore" Win 10 to it.

Well the screen said it would "reinstall Windows from the recovery drive" so I removed the HDD and gave it a go anyway. Got to 20% quickly enough but now isn't budging... If this doesn't complete, I'll go ahead and backup the HDD + wipe and recover Win10 + clone to SSD...

 

[ads295]

Well so the last thing I saw was 80% and now I'm looking up what TPM is and if it may have to do with an injected Win10 key. (I don't know much about how Win10 works)

 

[ads295]

After some reading it's clear that I can safely clear TPM. Did so, and it rebooted to go to "Installing Windows" ... I think the endeavour is going very well. HDD is sitting outside the laptop (laptop is by Acer. I asked a local Acer service centre how to go about it and they told me to not worry about the stickers. Advised me to remove the HDD.)

 

[ads295]

Doing my due diligence to close this thread:
The install worked fine. Am typing this off my laptop that only has the SSD inside. Recovery disk was made using Acer Care utility when the laptop was purchased.
Shall now put in my HDD, close up the laptop and select the SSD as a boot drive henceforth.

Thanks for all those that helped.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Glad it worked out!

 

[deustroop]

Very interesting.The dynamic to such an install would appear to be that the install must find the original machine but not necessarily the same drive.But how flexible is the notion of the original machine ?

 

[ads295]

Back when I used to work at a supply chain company and handle parts to return to vendor, we had a sequence of instructions on what to do for Win8 key injection. I think the buck stops there - if the injected key matches the expected one by the recovery, it proceeds. Making it drive dependent would be silly, now that I think of it...