Move Windows 10 Installation to Another Drive (SSD/HDD) Easily

Can you move Windows installation to another drive?

When your old hard drive is on the verge of collapse, or is no longer adequate for your use, you may purchase a new HDD or SDD to replace it. But how about the operating system?

If you neither want to buy another Windows license key nor go through the hassle of installing OS & programs from scratch, then you may want to move Windows 10 to another drive directly. In fact, it is possible. But since there are many complex system files involved, you can't achieve it by manual copy and paste.

In the following article, I will share the specific method and a few caveats to migrate Windows10 with secure boot.

• Can you transfer Windows 10 license key to new hard drive?
• How to move windows 10 installation to another drive easily?

Can you transfer Windows 10 license key to new hard drive?

This is a major concern for many people. If the license key cannot be migrated, then there is no point in moving Windows to another drive. So let’s take a look at the 3 license types:

✦ Retail: The license you purchase from local store or online retailer. It can be transferred between different hard drives and computers as many times as you want. If your Windows 10 is upgraded from Windows 8.1 or Windows 7 retail copy, the key is also transferable, but only once.

✦ Volume: Such licenses are distributed in bulk to large organizations. Usually it allows one master key to activate any installation of Windows 10, but you cannot activate devices that doesn’t belong to the organization. Also, it’s not allowed to transfer the key with the device when the system changes ownership.

✦ OEM: This license is preinstalled on a new computer by the manufacturer. It’s linked to the motherboard in the device, so you cannot transfer it to another device, but it’s OK to install it on a new hard drive on the same PC.

To sum up, not all Windows license keys can be migrated to other computers, but they can all be transferred to another hard drive on the same machine (as long as you don't change the motherboard).

Tips:

• If you are not sure of your license type, search for “Command Prompt” and type the command “slmgr /dli”. Press Enter and the information will show in the popping out window.
• Sometimes you may have activation problems and need to contact Microsoft support to explain the scenario and prove that you indeed have the license.

How to move windows 10 installation to another drive easily

Since it’s possible to move Windows OS to another drive, how to accomplish it exactly?

A common method is to restore Windows 10 system image to new hard drive. It involves both backup and restore, which is not very straightforward. And if you’ve ever created system image with Windows Backup and Restore, you may know how error-prone it is.

To fulfill the task more efficiently, disk clone would be a better solution. With it, the procedure could be simplified as: install the new drive >> clone system (or disk) >> boot from the new hard drive. However, Windows doesn’t come with a cloning feature, you need specialist disk clone software to take over the job.

The one I use here is a freeware for all Windows OS and all brands of devices, AOMEI Backupper Standard. It enables you to migrate Windows 10 to new hard drive for free, and the operation is really simple. With the intelligent cloning mode, you are even allowed to migrate Windows 10 to smaller SSD.

Now let’s get started.

Preparations before moving Windows to another drive

▶ Clean up your old hard drive

Delete junk files, uninstall programs you don’t need, clear temporary files through a disk cleanup.

▶ Install disk cloning software

Download the disk cloning software and install it on your current hard drive. If you are running Windows Server, you can use the specialized Server edition.

▶ Install the new hard drive

If your PC has more than one slot, just install the new HDD or SSD alongside the old hard drive. Otherwise please use an USB to SATA adapter to connect it.

• If it’s a brand new hard drive and it doesn't show up in File Explorer, you might need to initialize it before using. Here’s a guide provided by Microsoft.
• If you’ve already stored some files in it, it’s better to backup the hard drive first, otherwise all the data will be overwritten during cloning.

Clone Windows 10 to another drive | step by step

Now you are ready to move Windows 10 to another drive. The feature we use here is Disk Clone. It enables you to clone the entire hard drive including all the system and non-system partitions for free.

It's also possible to transfer only operating system to new hard drive, just upgrade to a higher edition with a discount and use the System Clone feature. It will auto select the system partition required for Windows to run.

▶ How to move Windows 10 to another drive:

1. Launch the software and navigate to Clone tab, the options here include System Clone, Disk Clone and Partition Clone. The following tutorial will use Disk Clone as an example.

2. Select your source disk with Windows 10 installed, and click Next.

3. Select the connected target HDD or SSD, click Next to continue.

4. Confirm the operation and Start Clone. Here are also some additional options that may be helpful to you:

◆ SSD Alignment: If your target drive is an SSD, ticking this option will accelerate its reading and writing speed and improve the performance.
◆ Sector By Sector Clone: If you are cloning to a larger drive, you can tick this option to copy all the sectors, no matter used or not. It also helps with cloning system reserved recovery partition.

When the progress reaches to 100%, the Windows installation has been transferred to new hard drive.

Tips:

• The Standard edition supports cloning basic disk and non-system dynamic volumes. If you want to clone dynamic system volume, please upgrade to Professional edition.
• As for partition style, Standard edition supports cloning all data disks and MBR system disks.

💛Important Notes: 

You will find the cloned SSD not show full capacity after cloning disk to larger disk, since it will not adjust partition size automatically to fit on the destination disk. To make full use of disk capacity, try the following 3 practical options in Edit Partitions feature (supported by the professional version).

👉 Copy without resizing partitions: It will not resize the partition size.

👉 Add unused space to all partitions: It will reallocate the unallocated space to each partition of the target disk, appropriate for the disk size.

👉 Manually adjust partition size: It allows you to extend unallocated space to any partition on the destination disk you want. And it requires you to manually adjust the size of the partition.

👉 Besides, you may see another premium feature in this feature - Convert the destination disk from MBR to GPT, and it may be different, depending on both disk types. In view of this, you may see Convert the destination disk from GPT to MBR option. 

It helps to convert MBR to GPT or GPT to MBR with booting issues when the destination and source disk has different partition style. And the free version of AOMEI Backupper only supports cloning system disk between two MBR disks. You need to upgrade to the professional edition and then clone GPT to GPT, MBR disk to GPT, or GPT to MBR.

So, now the question is what is MBR or GPT and how do I differentiate between them?

Both MBR and GPT are two different disk types for data storage. And you can check its disk properties in Disk Management. The overall steps are below:

• Press Win + R to open the Run window. Then, type diskmgmt.msc and hit OK to open disk management.
• Then, right-click the disk you want to clone and select Properties in the pop-up window.
• In the Properties window, select the Volume tab and confirm the partition style. It can be MBR (Master Boot Record) or GPT (GUID Partition Table).

• Similarly, check the disk partition tyle of the destination disk. If it is still MBR, you can move Windows 10 installation to another drive successfully without charging.

Supplement: How to boot from the new hard drive successfully

After the cloning is complete, if your PC has only one drive bay, you can shut it down and physically replace the old hard drive with the new one; if it has more than one slot, and you want to keep the old hard drive as a second storage, you just need to do the following:

1. Restart the computer, press the required key to enter BIOS. The specific key depends on the manufacturer and model, which you can directly search in Google.
2. Set the new hard drive as the first boot option, then press F10 to save the change and exit.

If your computer boot from the new drive successfully, then you are free to decide what to do with the old hard drive. You can either discard it or keep it as a storage device. AOMEI Backupper also integrates a disk wipe feature to help you clean a hard drive completely.

Conclusion

If you want to move Windows 10 installation to another drive, the simplest way is using disk clone software. AOMEI Backupper is a good choice with its powerful disk clone and system clone features. You can use it to migrate operating system from a hard drive to a larger HDD or smaller SSD.

If you need to transfer hard drive to new computer without reinstalling windows 10, there’s also a Universal Restore feature to ensure the computer can boot after dissimilar hardware restore. Download and give it a try!