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Installing Win 10 on a New SSD

M

mattspeer01

Member
Last week I upgraded my desktop PC from Win 8.1 Pro to Win 10 Pro. I installed it on the SSD in my computer. I want to replace that SSD with a newer, higher capacity model. I made a Win 10 boot USB drive. If I replace my current SSD with the new one and boot from the USB to install Win 10 Pro, will that be an issue?

In the past I thought I had read something about Windows having install authentication issues if you change too much hardware around. It basically treats your computer as a different machine, requiring a brand new copy of Windows to install. Will that happen to me if I swap SSDs?
 
I've had very good luck with Windows 10. I keep an 80Gb laptop drive with a fresh install on it (for Intel) and clone drives from it to drop in different systems. It always rebuilds itself on initial boot and may reboot a few times, but have swapped it from lga 775 systems to X58, H61 and X79. Always get it up running again on whatever chipset. Hard drive size doesn't effect it at all. Now it won't load on an AMD system at all. That requires a fresh install..
 
mattspeer01 said:
Last week I upgraded my desktop PC from Win 8.1 Pro to Win 10 Pro. I installed it on the SSD in my computer. I want to replace that SSD with a newer, higher capacity model. I made a Win 10 boot USB drive. If I replace my current SSD with the new one and boot from the USB to install Win 10 Pro, will that be an issue?

In the past I thought I had read something about Windows having install authentication issues if you change too much hardware around. It basically treats your computer as a different machine, requiring a brand new copy of Windows to install. Will that happen to me if I swap SSDs?
Click to expand...

Samsung's drive migration software will handle that drive swap nicely.

I assume other SSD mfgs have similar software to help you.
 
Win10 has the "reset" feature like 8.1

You can reset windows back to it's basic install.

So you can clone the SSD, and then do the reset on the new SSD and choose not to save your files. That should leave a basic install of Win10 on the new SSD.

If there is a screw-up, you still have the original working SSD to fall back on and try again.
 
Just install the new ssd and do a fresh install of win 10. A drive swap isn't enough of a change to make a difference for activation. A motherboard/cpu swap, on the other hand...
 
Can someone please explain the optimal way to partition the new SSD during the clean install. I am looking for whatever is going to give me the fastest boot times and keep the OS running smoothly.

I typically keep the OS and programs on the SSD and media files and documents on a traditional HD.
 
I ran into an issue. I swapped my old SSD with Win 10 for the new one and now it is saying my Win 10 product key is invalid during the clean install. Is that because it's still installed on the old SSD? If so, how do I overcome that?
 
mattspeer01 said:
Last week I upgraded my desktop PC from Win 8.1 Pro to Win 10 Pro. I installed it on the SSD in my computer. I want to replace that SSD with a newer, higher capacity model. I made a Win 10 boot USB drive. If I replace my current SSD with the new one and boot from the USB to install Win 10 Pro, will that be an issue?

In the past I thought I had read something about Windows having install authentication issues if you change too much hardware around. It basically treats your computer as a different machine, requiring a brand new copy of Windows to install. Will that happen to me if I swap SSDs?
Click to expand...
clone this SSD to the new SSD and remove thew programs you do not want.
 
mattspeer01 said:
I ran into an issue. I swapped my old SSD with Win 10 for the new one and now it is saying my Win 10 product key is invalid during the clean install. Is that because it's still installed on the old SSD? If so, how do I overcome that?
Click to expand...

Did you put in a product key during the install? Because you shouldn't. If all hardware is the same, it should activate once you are online, but only if you didn't try to put in one of the generic keys it actually displays once activated.

As silicon mentioned, cloning is also an easy option for something like this, and usually works out just as well in the end.
 
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