Windows 10: Concerns with fresh install on different hard drive

Hi everyone, I've upgraded to 10 from W7, and I've had nothing but problems with it, so i'm concerned about the installation to a different SSD than the one I'm using, my mind is telling me it should be fine as the Upgrade happened all on the same hardware, but changing the location of installation, does that affect activation?

:)

 

Windows Anniversary Update cannot install. Tried a lot, still not solved

None of this helped, unfortunately. We will now try a fresh install (on a different hard drive)

 

How do I reinstall Windows 10 on a brand new hard drive?

The hard drive in my notebook computer is failing. How do I reinstall Windows 10 after installing the new drive?

I would like a fresh install of Windows 10 with minimal software. I'm not concerned with saving any of my old data or programs.

I just want to get the computer back up and running Windows 10 fresh and new. The notebook still has the product Key on the bottom tag.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The computer currently still runs with the old hard drive. The drive is just really noisy, but it's still running. So I can use this computer do download things. In fact,
I was trying to use the MediaCreationTool to create a USB Windows Reinstall, but I keep getting the error code
0x8004205 - 0xa001a after about 4 attempts trying different things I gave up on that. I keep getting the same error every time.

Is there another way to install a fresh copy of Windows 10? Like I say, I'm not concerned with saving any old data or programs. A totally fresh copy of Windows 10 would be just fine.

Thanks.

 

I went from a Samsung 840 Pro 256GB to a Samsung 850 Pro 512GB a couple of weeks ago using Macrium to clone, then I extended the C: partition with no negative effects. Hope that helps*Smile

 

I'm not looking to clone though, it retains all relevant information when cloning, but my concern is the fresh install from the media creation tool and format all drives, do a fresh install and start new.

 

Whether you clone to, or image and restore to, or even clean install to a blank different SSD should make no difference in activation of a fresh/clean install as long as the initial upgrade activated successfully. MS activation server should allow it as the same machine.

That's usually only a concern with a motherboard swap and likely overcome with a phone call to the MS robot.

 

sounds good to me, I'll give it a go and see what happens, hopefully I won't need to go down the automated MS machine then *Smile

 

all done, worked a treat, it asked me for my product key twice during installation, but skipped both times and windows says it's activated, so no concern was necessary, I'll contribute to your rep points for the help, thanks.

 

Glad it worked as we all thought it would!