I will buy a SSD for my Acer desktop and install Win 10 on it and other programs I have on my computer.
If I do a clean install of Win 10 on my SSD, do I have to delte Win 10 on the HDD first?
I guess it is not allowed having two Windows 10 on the same computer (both hdd and ssd)?
Why not just clone it over?
Hey joebilly,
Did you purchase Windows 10? If so, you should be able to install it to the SSD with the key it came with, but no, you can't run them both at the same time. And technically, you're supposed to remove it from the HDD in order to put it elsewhere.
If I were you, I would make sure my motherboard supports 6 Gb/s (or make sure the SSD is plugged into one) instead of 3, or it may not really be worth upgrading in the first place.
NavyLCDR
If I clone the hdd to ssd will everything on the hdd then be deleted or is cloning just another word of copy?
DustSailor
I have Win 10 from the free upgrade and I also dowloaded Win 10 to a usb stick with Windows Media Creation Tool. And yes, my motherboard supports 6 Gb/s.
Maybe the easiest way is to clone the hdd to ssd, then. I have very few programs on the hdd so it will fit on the new ssd.
If your present W10 is activated on that machine, you can do clean install on the SSD and reformat HDD it was on later. It might be better to do that just make sure you set SATA port to AHCI mode before you start.
Ok thanks.
Maybe I'll go for a clean install of Win 10 on the SSD then. I was thinking of using the HDD for backup and storage purposes anyway.
While I admire your desire to comply with the EULA 100% - nobody, including Microsoft (and probably not even a court or jury) is going to convict you for having two copies of the same Windows 10 for the time it takes to establish the new install before deleting the old one.
A clean install of Windows 10 to the SSD will likely cause you less technical problems than cloning, so if you don't mind re-installing everything, that's the way I would go. If it were me, this is what I would do:
1. Install SSD and leave the old hard drive disconnected.
2. Clean install Windows 10 to it by booting from Windows 10 install media (with the exact same version of Windows 10 you had installed previously), install it to the blank SSD, "skip" or "do this later" when it asks for a product key.
3. Make sure the new Windows 10 on the SSD is fully activated.
4. Install Macrium Reflect Free and MiniTool Partition Wizard Free.
5. Connect the old HDD.
6. Use partition wizard to shrink the operating system partition on the old HDD to as small as possible.
7. Create a new partition on the old HDD that is at least a little larger than the used space on the operating system partition that you just shrunk and format it to NTFS. (this is assuming that you had over 50% available free space on the old HDD).
8. Use Macrium Reflect Free to image the operating system partition on the HDD to a single file image saved to the new partition you created in step 7.
9. Using Partition Wizard, delete all the partitions on the old HDD except for the new one containing the image file. Expand that one remaining partition to fill all the empty space created.
Walah! Now you have your backup drive with an image available to pull any data that you might have left behind and want to retrieve later and it is an image file backup of your old Windows 10 installation and not a second installed copy.
NavyLCDR
Ok, thanks for your help, and I'll see what I can do.
And you can guarrantee that the police will not knock on my door in coming weeks?
NSA, CIA or FBI maybe depending what you do for living but no police for sure.NavyLCDR
Ok, thanks for your help, and I'll see what I can do.
And you can guarrantee that the police will not knock on my door in coming weeks?
Sounds like a lot of trouble. I would just clone HDD to SSD. If activation cannot be done automatically, you can do it by phone and tell that your disk failed and you reinstalled Windows in a new disk. They will give you the activation key. After you make sure SSD works OK and has all your applications and data, you can just delete all partitions in the old disk and use it for data storage or backup. If it has at least 50% free space, you can shrink the Windows partition to the minimum and use the rest space. So you also have a backup in case something happens to the SSD. But then it is not a good idea to have it permanently connected to the PC just in case something happens to that as well. I would buy an external USB enclosure and make it a portable USB disk that is connected to the PC only when needed.
