New SSD - Clone HDD or Clean Install?

[MrHat1]

Hi!

I've seen many threads discussing this topic, however, none of these gave me the answer I wanted. Today, I received a Samsung 850 EVO 250 GB SSD, to use in the computer I'm going to build soon.

Currently, I have a 500 GB HDD which I filled up with about 200 GB of OS files, program files and media. I'd like to have only the necessary files on the SSD: Windows 10 Pro, Adobe Photoshop CC 2015, Sony Vegas Pro 13.0 and a few games (I expect to fill up max. 50 GB on the SSD).

My question is: Should I clone my current HDD to my SSD (only the necessary files), or is it best to buy a new Windows 10 Pro product key and do a clean install, as I will be using this SSD in my next PC also?

Is it possible to use this SSD on my current computer as the boot drive and later use the same SSD on my future computer (that I'm going to build soon)?

Also, is it possible to clone my current HDD to my SSD and later clean all the files from the SSD and start clean on my next PC?

And finally, where can I get a legal version of Windows 10 Pro, Windows 7 or Windows 8/8.1 (a product key) cheaply?

Thanks in advance.

 

[jsmithepa]

Cloning is all or nothing (clone definition identical copy?), so if you just want to have a few things on the SSD, re-install from scratch.

Move SSD to any machine you want, is just that the OS won't boot on the new machine, so once again, as long as you are not tired of re-installing OS+Apps.

 

[Jose Luis Lopes]

I swaped my laptop HDD to and SSD some days ago and also had this dilema, I only had about 100gb used so I decided for a clean install, just to not have the risk of passing any malware or trash overall, and I also prefer clean isntalls when I can do them.
From what I read you don't want everything from the HDD to the SSD and clone is all or nothing, so I would just go for the clean install

 

[MrHat1]

I swaped my laptop HDD to and SSD some days ago and also had this dilema, I only had about 100gb used so I decided for a clean install, just to not have the risk of passing any malware or trash overall, and I also prefer clean isntalls when I can do them.
From what I read you don't want everything from the HDD to the SSD and clone is all or nothing, so I would just go for the clean install

Where can I buy a cheap, but legal, version of Windows 7 / 8 / 8.1 / 10 Pro, so I will be able to do a clean install without having to spend a lot.

 

[MrHat1]

Cloning is all or nothing (clone definition identical copy?), so if you just want to have a few things on the SSD, re-install from scratch.

Move SSD to any machine you want, is just that the OS won't boot on the new machine, so once again, as long as you are not tired of re-installing OS+Apps.

Is it actually possible to copy everything from my current HDD to my SSD and then use the SSD as the boot drive on the new PC, without having any software-hardware issues or anything?

 

[jsmithepa]

Repeat "OS (old) won't boot on the new machine."

The reason you can't do it is, old OS has old drivers from old machine. It would be a perfect world is the OS is smart enough to notice, "ah, new machine, I should load new drivers." But it doesn't, there is no easy way for the user to do so manually.

 

[MrHat1]

Repeat "OS (old) won't boot on the new machine."

The reason you can't do it is, old OS has old drivers from old machine. It would be a perfect world is the OS is smart enough to notice, "ah, new machine, I should load new drivers." But it doesn't, there is no easy way for the user to do so manually.

Okay, thanks! Do you know where I can get Windows 7 / 8 / 8.1 / 10 Pro cheaply? Or can I do something like factory reset my current Windows..?

 

[Jose Luis Lopes]

Repeat "OS (old) won't boot on the new machine."

The reason you can't do it is, old OS has old drivers from old machine. It would be a perfect world is the OS is smart enough to notice, "ah, new machine, I should load new drivers." But it doesn't, there is no easy way for the user to do so manually.

Okay, thanks! Do you know where I can get Windows 7 / 8 / 8.1 / 10 Pro cheaply? Or can I do something like factory reset my current Windows..?

I bought several copies from g2a.com, even bought a win7 copy for 10€ and upgraded to win10 w/o problems