Question Migrating to new PC with Windows OS on separate drive

[Charly Brown]

I'm about to buy a new Gaming PC. My current gaming PC is 8 years old and it has Windows installed on the same drive I use for storage. New Gaming PCs have Windows on a separate drive while another drive is used exclusively for storage. My idea would be to clone my current SSD drive into the storage drive of the new PC, Including the Windows files and then somehow try to clean the OS files as much as possible, I know there will always be some old OS files left on the new storage drive but I don't care, I prefer this to having to do a clean installation which after 8 years of accumulating files, game saves, programs, etc. it will be a real pain. Can this be done without any issues? Is there a better way to do this? Thanks!

 

[Lutfij]

If you're on Windows 10, you're going to have to reactivate the OS on the new platform, that is after reinstalling the OS on said platform. Either which way you will need to reinstall the OS, motherboard drivers and what not since the older drivers will not be compatible with the new platform.

So if you're on Windows 10 and you're a genuine licence key holder, all you're going to have to do is call up Microsoft and they'll migrate the key to you new platform once they verify you're the owner of said key.

 

[Charly Brown]

If you're on Windows 10, you're going to have to reactivate the OS on the new platform, that is after reinstalling the OS on said platform. Either which way you will need to reinstall the OS, motherboard drivers and what not since the older drivers will not be compatible with the new platform.

So if you're on Windows 10 and you're a genuine licence key holder, all you're going to have to do is call up Microsoft and they'll migrate the key to you new platform once they verify you're the owner of said key.

Thanks, the new PC comes with its own Windows 10 license, which it will run from the dedicated drive, so there is no need to transfer my existing license. My issue is really with cloning my existing hard drive into the new, separated storage drive to keep my programs, game saves, files, etc into the new PC without having to reinstall games, programs etc. The new drive will also get the old Windows OC files but I don't care, I just want to avoid having to do a clean installation of programs, games, etc. I take the new PC will run Windows from the dedicated OS drive and won't care about other OS files on the storage drive?