Windows 10: I have Windows 10 on my HDD and I want it on my SSD.

A few years ago I bought Windows 10 on a disk and installed it onto my HDD.


Now I have an SSD and want the better load times that come with having the OS on the SSD.


I still have the original packaging and disk, along with the activation key.


Would there be any way to "de-activate" and reuse the activation key when running through the windows install to have it on my SSD?

:)

 

Does Windows 10 automatically recognise that a SSD has replaced a HDD?

I have recently replaced the HDD in my Windows 10 laptop with a SSD. As I understand it, Windows periodically runs a defragmentation in the background on a HDD. However, SSD drives do not require defragmenting and running such a tool can shorten the life
of a SSD.

The SSD was a clone of the HDD and not a new installation. Will Windows 10 recognize that the laptop now has a SSD and stop its background defragmentation or do I need to take specific steps to prevent this activity occurring on the SSD? If I need to take
action please advise on the steps I should take.

Thanks for any advice anyone can offer.

 

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 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 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.

 

Windows 10 Dual Drive (HDD and SSD) Boot issue

Thanks for the timely response DaveM121. I did leave the old HDD in place while installing the SSD. Do I need to -re-install Windows 10 on the SSD, of can I skip this step?