Bought a used PC with Windows 10 - Can I reinstall OS on SSD?

[RipGroove99]

My Mothers old PC finally gave up yesterday so to get her up and running quickly and cheaply we bought a used pre built Acer Aspire XC600 tower (3GHz i5-3330, 8GB of RAM, 1TB HDD) from a local classified website, the seller has kindly already done a clean install of Win 10 64-bit and updated all drivers so there is no unwanted software on it (nice), the system is way more powerful and snappy than her old one so she's super happy.

I was thinking of adding an SSD for the OS and keep the original 1TB for storage, so how do I work that around the current install of Win10? Technically who even owns the OS that the seller installed? There is obviously an account signed in on it currently which he told me to change the username and password at my leisure, he set it up with the name "User" and a generic password for now. I'm pretty good with building PC's (compared to your average Joe public) but I usually buy a new OS when I build mine so I've not yet dealt with what I'm attempting here.

 

[USAFRet]

Yes you can do a reinstall of the OS on an SSD. In fact, a full wipe and reinstall should be your first move anyway, for any used PC.
Even if the previous owner said he did it.

Is this Win 10 install activated? Either yes or no, a reinstall on the new SSD is easy.

Disconnect the HDD, put in the SSD, install.
How to do a CLEAN installation of Windows 10

 

[RARRAF]

well depending on how much stuff is installed on the 1tb you can clone the drive using "Macrium Reflect" very good tool or if you buy a samsung ssd they come with there own cloning tool which works. But then it comes to what size ssd you want a 256gb is a good start and plenty for OS and a few tools have a look on youtube lots of videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuI2yFSAiN0

 

[RipGroove99]

Ah cloning might be the way then, didn't even think of that. There is nothing on the 1TB other than the OS and drivers etc.

 

[USAFRet]

Ah cloning might be the way then, didn't even think of that. There is nothing on the 1TB other than the OS and drivers etc.

That would work as well. I still recommend a clean install, but a clone operation would work.
Specific steps for a successful clone operation:
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Verify the actual used space on the current drive is significantly below the size of the new SSD
Download and install Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration, if a Samsung SSD)
Power off
Disconnect ALL drives except the current C and the new SSD
Power up
Run the Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration)
Select ALL the partitions on the existing C drive
Click the 'Clone' button
Wait until it is done
When it finishes, power off
Disconnect ALL drives except for the new SSD
This is to allow the system to try to boot from ONLY the SSD
Swap the SATA cables around so that the new drive is connected to the same SATA port as the old drive
Power up, and verify the BIOS boot order
If good, continue the power up

It should boot from the new drive, just like the old drive.
Maybe reboot a time or two, just to make sure.

If it works, and it should, all is good.

Later, reconnect the old drive and wipe as necessary.
Delete the 450MB Recovery Partition, here:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/4f1b84ac-b193-40e3-943a-f45d52e23685/cant-delete-extra-healthy-recovery-partitions-and-healthy-efi-system-partition?forum=w8itproinstall
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