Windows 10: Moving a Windows 10 M.2 drive to a new machine

I have an Intel NUC 7i5 running Windows 10 (20H2 1042. 906) on an NVME M.2 drive. The NUC is over heating and shutting down periodically. I have replaced the fan and cleaned the cooling fins , but it still shutting down off and on. I'm fully backed with Acronis so I feel pretty safe in that respect. Can I buy a new NUC and move my M.2 into it without license issues? If I remember correctly I purchased the license online when I initially set up this NUC 3 years ago. Thanks in advance.

:)

 

replacing C: with larger M.2 NVme drive and move programs installed on D: to the new M.2 drive

I have a DELL Desktop Computer XPS XPS8920-7581SLV-PUS Intel Core i7 7th Gen 7700 desktop running Windows 10 Pro with the Toshiba 250 GB M.2 NVme drive as the C: drive and a 1TB hard disk as the D: drive. I have installed a couple of games and applications to the D: drive due to the size of the install files.

I am now planning to replace the Toshiba 250 GB M.2 drive with a Samsung 500 GB 970 EVO M.2 NVme drive.

The procedure I plan to use is to:

• clone the Toshiba drive to a new Western Digital SSD installed in a hard disk bay
  
• replace the Toshiba with the Samsung
  
• clone the new SSD back to the Samsung
  

At that point I should have a bootable C: on the Samsung NVme drive.

The next step would be to move the games and applications from the 1TB hard disk to the Samsung NVme drive since I now have the space for them.

However it is not really possible to just move installed applications due to all the Registry changes that would be needed.

The two applications are Visual Studio 2015 and 2017 (both Community Edition) and the games are World of Warcraft, Destiny 2, and Fallout 4 (the last being a Steam download).

So I am looking for advice on these changes.

Alternative approaches

It seems that I have a couple of options:

• clone the 1TB hard disk to the new SSD and just use the new SSD as D:
  
• uninstall the games and applications then reinstall them to the new C:
  
• create a D: partition on the new NVme drive and copy the installation folders there
  

The easiest approach would seem to be to clone the 1TB drive to the new SSD as D: and move on. However I would be missing out on the NVme goodness with the games as well as the Visual Studio programming environment.

The most straightforward approach would be to uninstall the games and applications from the 1TB hard disk and then reinstall them to the C: drive.

The applications are Visual Studio 2015 and Visual Studio 2017, both Community Edition. These would both be straightforward to uninstall from D: and reinstall to C:.

The games are World of Warcraft and Destiny 2 from Blizzard and Fallout 4 from Steam. These games will require long download time probably two or three days over my internet access. And I would have to start Fallout 4 all over again.

Concluding thoughts

Perhaps the best option would be to combine the first two options.

Since the Visual Studio uninstall and install would be fairly painless I could do that while leaving the games on the 1TB drive and then do the clone of the 1TB drive to the new SSD. Then at a later date I could move World of Warcraft and Destiny 2 over to the NVme drive.

I would think that working with Visual Studio would be easier and quicker from the NVme C: drive while the games would be quick and responsive enough if the game assets are on an SSD.

 

Windows 10 Tweaks

Pressing “Windows+Pause Break” (it’s up there next to scroll lock) opens the “System” Window.

Windows 10: In the new version of Windows, Explorer has a section called Quick Access. This includes your frequent folders and recent files. Explorer defaults to opening this page when you open a new window. If you’d rather open the usual This PC, with links to your drives and library folders, follow these steps:

• Open a new Explorer window.
• Click View in the ribbon.
• Click Options.
• Under General, next to “Open File Explorer to:” choose “This PC.”
• Click OK

credit to Lifehacker.

 

Moving current win 10 sata ssd boot drive to a NVME M.2 ssd in a new self built computer

My plan is to clone the boot drive since I plan to keep the old computer just as it is and purchase a new win 10 license for the new computer. But I don't want to reload and rearrange everything.

Hence my plan to clone my current boot drive.

Since I have no NVME M.2 connection in my current computer (and the NVME M.2 to USB enclosures all get beat up online) I intend to start up the new computer with the cloned drive. Then clone that drive to the new blank NVME M.2 drive which will then become
the permanent boot drive for the new machine. At some, as yet undetermined, optimum point I will then apply the new Win 10 license to the new machine.

Will this work?

Is there a better way?

I do not want to do a fresh install on the new machine but since my wife is getting the old one and she doesn't care about anything on my current machine, a fresh install on my current machine
after I confirm the successful transition would be acceptable if it makes things easier.

FYI My current license for Win 10 Pro was a free upgrade from Win 7 Pro. The activation message says, "Windows is activated with a digital license linked to your Microsoft account."