I bought this laptop a couple months ago and it had Windows 10 pre-installed on it. It has a 500gb hard drive and I needed more space so I purchased a 1tb hard drive. I was wanting to just create a Windows 10 boot flash drive, install the new hard drive, install Windows 10, then connect the old hard drive to my hard drive usb enclosure and manually move over the files to the new hard drive. Is this possible to do without downloading Windows 10? Basically what I want is once I install the new hard drive and turn the laptop on I want Windows 10 to be just like it was when I purchased it without the pictures, videos, documents, etc that I have put on it. Thanks I really appreciate your help.
Recovery Drive - Create in Windows 10 - Windows 10 blog
Why don't you transfer your current system with an image.
Imaging with free Macrium - Windows 7 Help blog
Isn't that just for if something messes up with Windows 10 and it needs to be recovered?Recovery Drive - Create in Windows 10 - Windows 10 blogWill this just transfer over Windows 10 and not all the files I've saved since I bought the laptop?Why don't you transfer your current system with an image.
Imaging with free Macrium - Windows 7 Help blog
What you are doing is no different than if your hard drive failed and you had to install it to a new replacement hard drive. That's exactly why a recovery drive with the system files copied to it would be used. The alternative is to download a Windows 10 ISO file to make your install USB from - but you said you didn't want to download Windows 10 in your OP.Isn't that just for if something messes up with Windows 10 and it needs to be recovered?A Macrium Reflect clone or image would also transfer everything you have saved (if you only have a C: drive with both Windows and your data files.)Will this just transfer over Windows 10 and not all the files I've saved since I bought the laptop?
Ok thank you for all your help. I'd just download Windows 10, but with my current internet speed it always get to 99% and then fails for some reason.
Can you go to some internet cafe or a friend and download it to a USB stick.
oh I can go to my parents house, but I was wanting to do this tonight.
Yeah, but if the line cops out, you have to make an alternate plan.
Re Macrium imaging - with Macrium you image partitions. So whatever is in the partition you image will be transported in the image.
Ok I created the recovery drive, turned the laptop off, put the new drive in, and it said it was missing a partition. I turned put everything back the way it was, opened up Disk Management, and the new hard drive says:
New Volume (G
931.51 GB NTFS
Healthy (Primary Version)
What am I doing wrong?
