Can you move Windows 10 from HDD to SSD?
Hi, can anyone do me a favor? Today, I bought an SSD at a very low price for it’s on sale. I wish to replace my old HDD with it because I heard SSD could bring faster speed and many other benefits for my PC. I plan on moving Windows 10 from the old HDD to the new SSD without reinstallation. I have no idea how to do that and Windows doesn’t provide any inbuilt tools either. So, I’m here to ask whether there is any reliable third-party software that can help get it done?
Why move Windows 10 to SSD?
SSD, short for Solid-State Drive, is a storage device using integrated circuit assemblies to store data persistently, typically using flash memory. SSD have many advantages compared with HDD, for example, higher speed. If you put the system on an SSD, the write and read speed of your computer will be dramatically improved and thus, boot times and load times will be shortened very much.
In generally, there’re 2 ways to make a new SSD as the system drive – clean installation or OS migration. A clean installation helps install Windows 10 on an SSD with an installation USB. In this way, your system will return to the same state it was on the day you first turned on your PC, but in the meantime, all files on the primary drive, namely the C drive, will be gone. Thus, you have to reinstall all programs again after the clean install.
To avoid the hassle mentioned above, you’re recommended to directly move Windows 10 to SSD from the old HDD with the help of some third-party utility. In this way, all files on the previous C drive will be retained and afterwards, you can use the C drive as a data drive to get the most out of it. It’s also easier compared with a clean installation for you don’t need to prepare an installation USB or CD and the time it takes is also shorter.
Which utility should be chosen to do it?
How to move Windows 10 from HDD to SSD? There is much software on market claiming to migrate OS from one hard drive to another and you may not be able to figure out which one to choose. Here, I recommend AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard –powerful and user-friendly partition software, with which, you can move Windows 10 to SSD without reinstalling. Moreover, this freeware also supports hard disk clone and system disk wiping.
How to move Windows 10 to SSD?
Now, I’ll explain how to use the impressive software to migrate Windows 10 from an HDD to an SSD step by step. But before proceeding, please pay attention:
- The standard version of AOMEI Partition Assistant can only migrate OS from MBR to MBR, if you want to migrate Windows 10 from MBR to GPT, or GPT to MBR/GPT, you must upgrade it to the professional edition.
- If you migrate the OS from MBR to GPT, or GPT to MBR, you must change the boot mode (either from Legacy BIOS to UEFI or from UEFI to Legacy BIOS) to let the OS boot normally.
Step 1. Connect the new SSD to the computer; install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Stadard and click “Migrate OS to SSD” in the upper left wizard.
Step 2. Select a piece of unallocated space on the SSD. If there is not, tick “I want to delete all partitions on this disk to migrate system to the disk”.
Step 3. Now, you can customize the size of the partition on the SSD. After it’s done, hit “Next”.
Step 4. After returning to the main interface, click on “Apply” on the upper left and hit “Proceed” to start the migration.
It won’t be long before it’s completed. So, be patient.
Conclusion
In this post, you’ve learned why and how to move Windows 10 to SSD. A useful third-party utility AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard and its tutorial were given to help get it done. If you don’t want to fresh install Windows 10 on the new SSD, hopefully, this post has given you another workaround.
