windowns to home laptop to windows 10 education

[jagsta21]

i bought my asus rog laptop with windows 10 home. i have no copy of the windows key it was already on the motherboard or wherever it is stored. im wanting to upgrade to windows 10 education from my school. will my product key for windows 10 home disappear forever?

 

[Quarkzquarkz]

Yep, because if you ever do upgrade in the future, they're going to ask for your key and if you didn't have it then and don't have it now, it's going to bite you in the you know what... good luck!

 

[jagsta21]

do you know if windows 10 education ever expires?

 

[Math Geek]

if you really want to, you could shrink the home edition partition after uninstalling everything. then dual boot with your edu edition and just use that os as the default one. this would leave your home edition alone in case you want to use it again.

with that said. i don't think you would lose the home edition since the key is stored on MS server and is based on the hardware installed. so in theory you should be able to install the edu version fresh and go back and forth at will so long as your edu version is valid. this is theory of course as i have not tried any such thing myself. no use for edu version so never tested it with any scenarios.

 

[jagsta21]

if you really want to, you could shrink the home edition partition after uninstalling everything. then dual boot with your edu edition and just use that os as the default one. this would leave your home edition alone in case you want to use it again.

with that said. i don't think you would lose the home edition since the key is stored on MS server and is based on the hardware installed. so in theory you should be able to install the edu version fresh and go back and forth at will so long as your edu version is valid. this is theory of course as i have not tried any such thing myself. no use for edu version so never tested it with any scenarios.

i have windows 10 home installed on a 240gb m.2 ssd could i just clone it over to a spare hdd and keep it as a backup? would that still work?

 

[Math Geek]

that should work. i'd install the drive after cloning and make sure it boots up before putting it away. but if it boots, then stick it on a shelf in case of emergency. better safe than sorry when trying something new

i have gone from home edition to pro to insider builds back and forth and each activated fine from fresh installs, so i'd assume the edu edition would behave similarly but can't give 100% assurance until i have tried it myself. i know edu has a couple special apps installed but otherwise it should still be same basic win 10 install.