Moving windows 8.1 to a m.2

[James Davies]

So I want to move windows 8.1 to a m.2 from my hdd for super fast boot time but want to keep all my files bar the windows on the hdd can this be done

 

[mbarnes86]

Hi

You may have to do a re install of Windows from scratch especially if the M2 drive is smaller than the hard drive or smaller than the used space on the hard drive

If you run disk clean up, empty recycle bin, empty restore points etc you may recover a lot of space

but few programs for migrating Windows C: partition will go to a smaller drive

If your hard drive has a C: & D: drive and the C: partition can be cleaned up, size shrunk to same size as the M2 drive using something like gparted (bootable linux cd).

Then you can migrate the windows partition to the M2 drive using Acronis (often given for free by SSD & HD manufacturers.)

Each Windows hard disk has a identification number embeded in MBR, Windows and anti virus programs will object when starting up if this number is wrong, so this has to be added to SSD/M2 and changed on old hard drive

so re installation from scratch may be required
backup all important data before starting this procedure

Regards
Mike Barnes