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Win 7 to 10 from one SSD to another?

pete6032

pete6032

Diamond Member
I'm going to upgrade my parent's computer to Windows 10. They're currently running Win 7 on an old 120GB SSD. Now that storage prices have come down I want to get a new, larger SSD for them. How can I do the upgrade process while moving to a new drive? Do I need to install 7 on the new SSD before I install 10 on it? Not sure how to get the 10 upgrade to do a full clean install on a new drive. :wub:
 
MustISO said:
Cloning the old drive to the new one would be the easiest thing to do and then do the win 10 upgrade. You can also download the Windows 10 media for doing a clean install after an upgrade has been performed once.

http://www.howtogeek.com/224342/how-to-clean-install-windows-10/
Click to expand...

Probably the best choice, but then you will have to reinstall all your programs and settings. Myself, I would clone the current drive to the bigger SSD and put the old drive in a safe location. Upgrade the new SSD and see how you like it. If you want a clean install, you can wipe the drive and do the clean install of Windows 10. This way your original drive and copy of Windows 7 remains untouched.
 
Just create a bootable USB flash drive using MS media creation kit. With the latest build of W10, you can use the product key of W7 to do a fresh install. Then just install the new SSD in the computer and do a clean install with the flash drive.
 
1. Make a copy of the Win 7 product key, using Produkey or Belarc Advisor (both are free).
2. Plug in the new SSD as a secondary drive.
3. Use AOMEI Partition Assistant (free) to clone the existing Win7 SSD to the new SSD.
4. Power down & remove the old SSD.
5. Boot from the new SSD, then download the Win10 .iso file from Microsoft.
6. Use Rufus software (also free) to create a bootable USB Win10 installation thumb drive.
7. While still running Win7, begin the Win10 upgrade procedure using the setup.exe file on the USB thumb drive.
 
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Fresh install won't work unless you first do an upgrade. It's the upgrade that "registers" the PC with Microsoft, thereby allowing subsequent fresh installs.

Clone the current SSD to the new, larger SSD using Macrium Reflect (free) or similar. Then boot from the new SSD and do the upgrade to 10. Alternatively you could do the upgrade before the clone step, but that could be risky if you don't have much free space on the 120GB drive. Better to take the path of lesser risk -- plus it leaves you with the untouched 120GB drive if you need to revert back for any reason.

After you have the 7 > 10 upgrade complete on the new SSD, you can optionally do a fresh install of 10 using one of the downloadable ISOs.
 
skriefal said:
Fresh install won't work unless you first do an upgrade. It's the upgrade that "registers" the PC with Microsoft, thereby allowing subsequent fresh installs.

Clone the current SSD to the new, larger SSD using Macrium Reflect (free) or similar. Then boot from the new SSD and do the upgrade to 10. Alternatively you could do the upgrade before the clone step, but that could be risky if you don't have much free space on the 120GB drive. Better to take the path of lesser risk -- plus it leaves you with the untouched 120GB drive if you need to revert back for any reason.

After you have the 7 > 10 upgrade complete on the new SSD, you can optionally do a fresh install of 10 using one of the downloadable ISOs.
Click to expand...

Not anymore. You can use a 7 or 8/8.1 key with a clean install of 10 that murders any other OS on the system as of the 1511 build.
 
Clean install on the new SSD as it was said. Keep the old one as a spare operating system for a while until you are confident the new system runs as expected.
 
I have done a clean install and upgrade install of Windows 10. I don't notice any performance difference between the two.

OP, if you actually considering both options, I would recommend the upgrade. Had a lady a couple weeks ago ask for the place to go to undo the upgrade, as she was having issues with it (she didn't go into detail). I mean, assuming you don't touch the original SSD, you could clone it back to the original disk if your parents have issues, but then you have to deal with data changes that have occurred during that time.

They are going to be running Windows 10 on an SSD. Either way you go, it's not going to be slow.
 
escrow4 said:
Not anymore. You can use a 7 or 8/8.1 key with a clean install of 10 that murders any other OS on the system as of the 1511 build.
Click to expand...
Has to be a key from the COA not OEM SLP key (which differs from the key on the COA included with new PC, Retail or OEM System Builder versions).
 
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