[SOLVED] How do I move my Windows installation to a new SSD?

[princedragonis]

I have a Windows 10 on my HDD. I recently purchased an M2 SSD. I wish to boot my Windows from it and have all the apps on it. It is being shown as a drive. I wish to move my Windows to the SSD. A reinstallation is okay. My question is:

If I try to install a Windows 10 copy from a live USB by setting BIOS boot priority to the flash drive instead of the HDD's Boot Manager (therefore, without disconnecting the existing HDD from the motherboard), can I install a Windows on the SSD, given it appears in the disk selection window? Assuming I can, what will happen upon a restart, if I set BIOS boot priority to the SSD now? Assuming now I have two separate operating systems on different disks both connected to the same board, can I format the HDD's C Drive (of course, after moving any data and given I am okay with saying goodbye to my software) and make it a normal HDD partition?

Will this do the migration, sort of, that I am looking for, or am I missing something?

 

[USAFRet]

What you described is NOT a migration. That is a clean install, and would be done improperly like that.


Clean install here:

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

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Or, migration of everything, all at once.
How much space is consumed on your current C drive?
What size/make/model is the new SSD?

 

[princedragonis]

Or, migration of everything, all at once.
How much space is consumed on your current C drive?
What size/make/model is the new SSD?

Migration of everything, all at once - how can that be done?

My C drive on HDD is currently 88GB. The SSD is a WDC 240GB M2.

 

[USAFRet]

-----------------------------
Specific steps for a successful clone operation:
-----------------------------
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)
If you are cloning from a SATA drive to PCIe/NVMe, install the relevant driver for this new NVMe/PCIe drive.
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

If you are going from a smaller drive to a larger, by default, the target partition size will be the same as the Source. You probably don't want that
You can manipulate the size of the partitions on the target (larger)drive
Click on "Cloned Partition Properties", and you can specifiy the resulting partition size, to even include the whole thing

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 all partitions on it.
This will probably require the commandline diskpart function, and the clean command.

Ask questions if anything is unclear.
-----------------------------

 

[princedragonis]

It says clone failed (error 0) after a while.

 

[USAFRet]

Please show a screencap of the Disk Management window.
The C drive is a 1TB HDD?

 

[princedragonis]

The F is SSD I suppose. I had it named Windows (S prior, I think the cloning process changed that. It has become a raw partition now and isn't accessible anymore after the failed cloning (haven't formatted).

 

[USAFRet]

So, in the clone process, select everything except the D and E partition from the HDD.

Try this again.

In the proper conditions, cloning can be great.
In a convoluted partition scheme like this....problems may arise.

 

[princedragonis]

What's convulated? I only have the C drive with 275 GB as the system partition. Don't the three other partitions (450MB, 99MB, 523MB) get created automatically by Windows, don't they? So basically I have to select these three different partitions along with the main C partition and then clone all of them on the same partition on the second disk. Right? I thought Windows will recreate those boot partitions automatically later.

 

[USAFRet]

I was referring to the D and E partitions.

So in your clone operation, select ALL from that drive, except the D and E partitions.
That should be all that is needed. Nothing gets created later.

 

[princedragonis]

Ok, so now it says insufficient space. As you can see in the image below, #5 is not getting copied.

There is indeed empty space, but #5 just can't make it to the second disk. It is the recovery partition. I tried only dropping #5 onto the new disk, and it works, but then I can't add others except #1.

 

[USAFRet]

Click on "Cloned Partition Properties"
What does it show you?

 

[princedragonis]

The Cloned Partition Properties of the #4 shows this:

 

[USAFRet]

Shrink it down a little from 223.018.
Just a little.

And possibly skip #3.

 

[princedragonis]

Still not getting copied, even when I freed up 1.5GB.

Also tried not copying #3, the problem with #5 exists.

 

[USAFRet]

Does it give any error other than what we see at the bottom:
"Nothing copied. Insufficient space."

 

[SkyNetRising]

Still not getting copied, even when I freed up 1.5GB.
Also tried not copying #3, the problem with #5 exists.

#5 is not necessary. You can leave it out.

 

[princedragonis]

Does it give any error other than what we see at the bottom:
"Nothing copied. Insufficient space."

No, it doesn't.

#5 is not necessary. You can leave it out.

Okay, I will do it without #5. I guess recovery partitions cannot be cloned, that's why this error.

 

[USAFRet]

Okay, I will do it without #5. I guess recovery partitions cannot be cloned, that's why this error.

It can be cloned.
But if the procedure is complaining about "space", that is one of the things you can leave off.

 

[princedragonis]

Clone fails again even when I leave out #5 (the not enough space error doesn't come and cloning begins).

Here is the full error:

Clone failed - Error 0 - Read failed - 23 - Data error (cyclic redundancy check).-m_pSegmentToRestore->m_FileSystem.ReadFile- WriteFilemSystemData failed- pDataRun == NULL - RemapMFTRecord failed

 

[USAFRet]

"Clone failed - Error 0 - Read failed - 23 - Data error (cyclic redundancy check). "

That indicates a fail with the Source drive.

This cloning will not work, if it cannot read the Source drive.

 

[princedragonis]

Are there any source drive specific guidelines I have to follow?

 

[SkyNetRising]

Source drive is damaged. Cloning process can not read specific data portion and fails because of that.

Can you show screenshot from Hdtune health for source drive?

 

[princedragonis]

Yes, there is an error. Here:

 

[SkyNetRising]

2 pending sectors - that could be fixable.
Pending sectors get resolved by overwriting them.
You can do this with MHDD (scan with relocate option) or with Victoria software.