Question How to have windows installed on a new SSD on my Laptop?

[TheWestbank]

I have an Acer Aspire E5-475G with 1 TB HDD and a Windows 10 installed and activated via digital license. I want to get my laptop to run faster so I decided to buy a 128 GB M.2 SSD for my laptop. I've successfully installed the SSD into my laptop and now I want my windows to be installed on my SSD instead of my HDD. I've done some research online and some people said that I could migrate my OS from my HDD to SSD with a third party software and some other people said that I could just do a clean windows installation to my SSD and activation wouldn't be an issue as long as I'm connected to internet (since my windows is activated via digital license).

My question is, which one would you guys recommed? And after I installed the windows into my SSD, how do I remove the windows on my HDD?
Thanks.

 

[boju]

Fresh install is best in your situation because ssd is smaller than the hdd. To clone successfully the ssd needs to be atleast the same size because cloning clones the whole drive and not just Windows.

Guide how to do a fresh install. https://forums.tomshardware.com/faq/how-to-do-a-clean-installation-of-windows-10.3170366/

Once Windows is installed and booted from ssd you can format the hdd in Windows. First copy any personal files (documents, photos, music etc) across except applications, you'll need to install those again.

It is advised to remove the hdd before installing Windows on the ssd to avoid the chance of having it put the boot loader file on the hdd. Windows has a habit of doing that and if it does and you go format the hdd, the next time you start the laptop youll be greeted with an unfriendly boot error. Put back hdd after Windows install finishes.

 

[TheWestbank]

Fresh install is best in your situation because ssd is smaller than the hdd. To clone successfully the ssd needs to be atleast the same size because cloning clones the whole drive and not just Windows.

Guide how to do a fresh install. https://forums.tomshardware.com/faq/how-to-do-a-clean-installation-of-windows-10.3170366/

Once Windows is installed and booted from ssd you can format the hdd in Windows. First copy any personal files (documents, photos, music etc) across except applications, you'll need to install those again.

It is advised to remove the hdd before installing Windows on the ssd to avoid the chance of having it put the boot loader file on the hdd. Windows has a habit of doing that and if it does and you go format the hdd, the next time you start the laptop youll be greeted with an unfriendly boot error. Put back hdd after Windows install finishes.

Thanks for you answer. I really appreciate it. I've successfully reinstalled the windows now and everything seems to be working just fine.

 

[Colif]

Only way to format the hdd in windows is use diskpart/clean as Disk management will recognise it as a windows install and not do it.

if you just want to delete the old windows folder and keep using the data on rest of hdd, you can change the folder name of the windows folder on old drive to windows.old, and run disk cleanup and delete old system files.

If you want to wipe entire drive
from desktop, go to settings/update & security/recovery
under advanced startup, click restart now
choose troubleshoot
choose advanced
choose command prompt
type diskpart and press enter
type list disk and press enter
this shows all drives available, DVD/USB and hdd, make note of hdd number
type Select disk X - where X is the number of the hdd you want to wipe, change X to that number and press enter
once the drive you want to wipe is chosen, type Clean

restart PC and use disk management to format/partition the drive again.