Windows 10: Cloning your PC hard drive to your laptop - Yes it's possible!

Just want to share a trick that may interest some. Let's say you have better things to do than spend your time installing and tweaking software on your new laptop or desktop. Here is what you do. Make sure your laptop and desktop computer are from the same manufacturer and use the same processor.

For instance, my PC has an ASUS motherboard (obviously it's the motherboard that counts) and i5 processor. Same goes for my laptop.
This gives you a very good chance that they actually need more or less the same manufacturer drivers to boot up.

So you open the laptop and remove the hard drive. It's very simply and needs no skills. Just unscrew the screws at the back - the rest is self explanatory.

Hook this hard drive into your desktop PC and clone your C drive onto the laptop drive. If you don't want to risk losing whatever you already have on the drive, just the drive of some old discarded laptop or clone over the content somewhere else so you can restore it later if you want. Another trick is to check whether you can boot the PC from the laptop drive. That's also a good indication they are compatible.

Once you cloned the PC C: drive to the laptop drive, pop it in and see if you can boot.

For me, I've done this trick twice with two laptops. Both were Asus. It's worked fine. You can also clone laptop drive to PC which I did after a hardware failure. If you cloned PC to laptop, first thing to do on the laptop is to head over to the Laptop manufacturer's home page and download the drivers for that laptop and install it to make sure all the hardware will work as expected.

Some licenses may have to be re-entered.

Et voila you saved yourself hours or days of boring installations and configuration just by staying loyal to the same brand with both PC and laptop.

:)

 

I want to replace hard disc without losing windows 10 activation

You can clone your hard drive, but make sure the capacity of the new hard drive is greater than the old one.

You can try EZ GIG CLONING SOFTWARE or any other cloning software available.

Kindly do this before you lose your hard drive and valuable information. Get a backup as well.

There won't be any need for re-installation once you have cloned your hard drive. Replace the old hard drive and you are good to go.

 

what internal drive can i get please?

ok thank you for all your help. yes my hard drive is cloned and i use windows image backup and macrium reflect

 

This is not required. You can take a copy of Windows from one PC to another then it will boot and started with a message: Getting your devices ready... and will re-install all the drivers for the PC, and does not have to be the same CPU.

No need to remove the HD. Would be easier to use: Macrium Reflect Free to make a backup image to an external HD then restore to the other PC. Just make sure that BIOS is setup the same way ie. If Windows was installed using MBR then in the other PC, should be setup as MBR.

Yes, You must re-activate with new License.

In addition, Use: GhostBuster to delete all the orphan drivers from the old PC.

 

Must be new! It was a big deal when I got this to work with Win7 back when. People didn't even believe it was true.
Haha, so much for thinking I tried something most people wouldn't.

Oh yes, and it didn't work with Windows 8 from the same PC to a laptop with a lower spec Intel processor. It wouldn't boot at all.

 

Sometimes you get serious issues that prevent you booting or working as expectede.g. if graphics drivers are very different, chipset drivers are very different. My experience is that you always seem to get some inexplicable issues somewhere down the line and it really is better to go through the pain of clean install. Of course, it works then fine.

 

I lost count how many times I've done this for both Windows 8/10. A message: "Getting Your Devices Ready" meaning Windows is re-installing all the drivers for the new PC including the display driver ie. the same as if doing a fresh install.

Windows might not boot if:

• Before creating a back up image, you did not run DISM, SFC to make sure Windows is clean
• Third party software that was installed in the old PC not compatible with the new PC.

 

Once you figure out how to use it its great. I use it after all MB/ Computer changes.

 

Assuming you get beyond first hurdle. Maybe most of the time it works but not always.

 

Well, like I said - it does work if your laptop and your PC have the same make of motherboard and the same type of processor.