Windows 10: Copying HDD to SSD

Is there an easy way to do this?

:)

 

How to copy Windows 10 from HDD to a new SSD?

Hi,

Thank you for posting your query on Microsoft Community. Let me assist you.

Windows cannot be copied using the Copy or Move feature as it has to be installed on the hard disk. I suggest you to perform a Clean install of Windows on the SSD using an ISO file and then try to activate your copy of Windows. Refer the thread link
below for steps to perform a Clean install.

How to: Perform a Clean Install or Reinstall of Windows 10

Note: For activation issues after the installation you may contact the phone activation support.

Take a backup of the data before you install Windows 10 on the SSD. If you want to free the data of HDD then you will have to format the HDD at the time of installation of Windows 10 on the SSD.

Hope this information is helpful. Please do let us know if you need further assistance, we’ll be glad to assist you.

 

Copying files from HDD to SSD - not enough space error

My PC has a 500GB SSD for the OS and a 1TB HDD for data (both NTFS). The 1TB HDD has about 750GB of files on it. I've just successfully upgraded to a 1TB SSD (quick formatted as NTFS and showing in Win Explorer as having 1TB free) and I want to copy all
the files from the 1TB HDD to the 1TB SSD. I've tried a straight copy/paste in Win Explorer, but it refuses, saying there's not enough space on the destination drive. This confuses me, as it's only at three quarters capacity. How do I copy the files?

 

Windows 10 on HDD to a new SSD

I have recently replaced the 500 GB HDD in my laptop running Windows 10 with a 480 GB SSD. The laptop was fully configured with my applications and other settings. The steps I took were as follows:

1) Shrink the C: drive so it was significantly smaller than the SSD (by at least 100 GB) using the Disk Management tools in W10.

2) Copy all the files from D: onto an external HDD.

3) Download Ubuntu Linux and burn on to a DVD.

4) Download Windows 10 from Download Windows 10 and burn this on to a DVD.

5) Close down and boot the laptop from the Ubuntu DVD from step 3 (I used a USB DVD rewriter).

6) Plug in the external HDD.

7) Open a Linux terminal and cd to the external HDD.

8) Copy the C: partition to the external HDD using a command such as:

dd bs=1024k if=/dev/sda1 of=C-drive

where sda1 is adjusted to point to the correct partition.

9) Close down and remove the external HDD.

10) Remove the HDD and replace with the SSD.

11) Perform a clean install Windows 10 from the DVD from step 4. Deleting all partitions from the SSD if it has had any created on it. When it asked for the product key, there was an option to enter it later. Make sure that the C: drive that is created is
the same size or bigger than the C: drive was on the HDD.

12) Repeat steps 5, 6 and 7 then run the command

dd bs=1024k if=C-drive of=/dev/sda4

With the clean install of W10 64bit, sda4 was the C: drive on the SSD after the installation.

13) Reboot from the SSD. The first couple of times my laptop reported errors and went into repair and diagnostic cycles. The last one said something like Reboot or Go to further tools. I cannot remember the exact messages but the meaning was as I have described.
I rebooted and Windows 10 came up and ran perfectly.

14) With the SSD working I shrank the C: drive a few GB to make sure the physical space was the same size as the actual filesystem.

15) Create a D: format it and copy all the saved files on to the new D: from the external HDD.

Job done. All my applications worked perfectly and the laptop connected to my wireless network without needing the pass phrase re-entering. I had tried several other ways of cloning the HDD to the SSD, but as the SSD was 20 GB smaller this was the only way
I managed to get it to work.

I hope this helps others to make the HDD to SSD transition.