Moving windows 10 from HDD to SSD

[CiaranG99]

Hi, Sorry if this is in the wrong place but im looking to get an SSD which I want to install windows 10 on. I have the install on a usb so thats all good but I'm wondering how I would go about activating it since I already activated it on my HDD. Is it locked to my HDD? or is it locked to my microsoft account?, If its locked to my microsoft account would I just need to log in for it to activate?. Also how much space would windows take up on my SSD?, looking to get a 500gb SSD. Any help is appreciated thanks.

 

[why_wolf]

If you've register your W10 install with a Microsoft account then its tied to the Microsoft account. It will simply be registered again when you login with that Microsoft account.

W10 takes up 20-30Gb of space I believe on a fresh install.

 

[USAFRet]

A couple of options here:

Question - How much space is consumed on your current drive? What do you use this system for? What other drives do you have in this system?

What OS is this?
How well does it work currently?
How long has it been since the last time you actually did a full OS install?


1. A clean install.
No problem.
It is not 'locked' to your current drive, but rather to the rest of the system, primarily the motherboard. A reinstall on a new drive is no problem regarding activation.
This, of course, requires a reinstall of all you applications.

2. Migrating from your current drive to the new SSD.
This usually works. This requires that your current used space be significantly below the size of the new SSD.
For instance, if you get a 500GB SSD, your actual current consumed space must be below 400GB.

Answers to the above questions will lead to the correct path.

 

[CiaranG99]

If you've register your W10 install with a Microsoft account then its tied to the Microsoft account. It will simply be registered again when you login with that Microsoft account.

W10 takes up 20-30Gb of space I believe on a fresh install.

Thank you that is perfect

 

[CiaranG99]

A couple of options here:

Question - How much space is consumed on your current drive? What do you use this system for? What other drives do you have in this system?

What OS is this?
How well does it work currently?
How long has it been since the last time you actually did a full OS install?


1. A clean install.
No problem.
It is not 'locked' to your current drive, but rather to the rest of the system, primarily the motherboard. A reinstall on a new drive is no problem regarding activation.
This, of course, requires a reinstall of all you applications.

2. Migrating from your current drive to the new SSD.
This usually works. This requires that your current used space be significantly below the size of the new SSD.
For instance, if you get a 500GB SSD, your actual current consumed space must be below 400GB.

Answers to the above questions will lead to the correct path.

I was just gonna do a fresh install of everything and no migrating, Done a fresh windows install recently since i was having problems and most my games are on my external HDD so I won't lose anything important.