Windows 10: Swap SSDs Between Old and New PC?

I currently have a PC with Windows 10 on a 1 TB SSD. I’m about to receive a new PC which has only a 500 GB SSD. Both my current PC and the new PC I am about to receive are/will be running Windows 10 which is loaded on their respective SSDs. What I want to do is swap the SSDs. I will keep both PCs, but I’d like to put my existing 1 TB SSD in the new PC and put the new 500 GB SSD in my current PC. Will this work? When I insert the SSDs in their new slots, will Windows boot up OK?To add to the fun, I have Flight Simulator 2020 on my existing PC’s SSD. That’s the primary reason I want to just

:)

 

Unable to Boot to Windows 10 after Cloning old SSD to new SSD

Hi,

I'm not using the SATA ports. I'm using M.2 with the SSD, and the external SSD is connected to my PC using USB. My MB only has only one M.2 socket, so I can only plug in one SSD at a time. (I bought a wrong adapter that doesn't work with NVMe) So I cloned
my old SSD to an external SSD (Samsung M3 Portable SSD), and then swapped the old one, cloned the external SSD to my new SSD.

I tried AOMEI too, but the free version does not come with disk clone functions. I would probably try Macrium Reflect as suggested above. Thank you!

 

Getting windows to recognize new SSD after cloning and swapping

Today I cloned my SSD (some OCZ Vertex where Windows 10 x64 is installed) to a bigger SSD (some Crucial M500) then swapped the drives. (I followed this guide, pretty much step-by-step.)

Everything has gone smoothly except that when I go to Device Manager, the old SSD is still listed under Disk drives:





I have ran a benchmark with AS SSD Benchmark and got numbers that match those for the Crucial M500. So does it matter that Device Manager has the wrong name? If I'd like Windows to recognize the new drive properly and display as such under Device Manager, how would I do that please?

 

Cloning to SSD then swapping drive letters


@SamHobbs
What you want done is very simple and can be done in short period of time. Here's my suggestion:
There's 2 modes that Windows can be installed: UEFI and the old legacy MBR. Open Disk Management, look at the disk where your C drive is, if there's a

1. EFI System Partition, your Windows was installed using UEFI.
2. System Reserved partition, your Windows was installed using MBR

Next, Connect your SSD to an available Sata port (no need to format or do anything). Download: Macrium Reflect Free . Install and run. Follow the steps below:

1. From Macrium, click on image this disk under your C drive and save it to either an Internal or External Drive. This will create a single backup image of the whole disk containing your C drive.
2. Again, from Macrium, click on Restore tab and select the image created from step 1, Select your SSD as the destination drive, click Next->Finish
3. Exit Macrium. If your Windows was installed using MBR, Open disk management and make sure the SSD is marked "Active" else go to next step.
4. Shutdown your PC. Disconnect the HD containing Windows C drive then connect your SSD to it.
5. Reboot. Your PC should boot and the Windows should have C as the drive letter.

NOTE: The procedure above is to backup your Windows to an image file then copy it back to the SSD. This ensures proper cluster size aligment for the SSD. In addition, Macrium also perform Trimming for the SSD. This is more preferable than cloning.