Move operating system to a different hard drive
Move operating system to a different hard drive
How to move the operating system onto another HDD without relying on external software. You’re planning to purchase a 1TB HDD before Windows 10 is available, and you already have an 8.1 licensed drive from your old laptop. You’d like to reset everything cleanly.
Yes, the Windows upgrade process lets you choose which drive to install the new operating system on.
In earlier versions there were choices for a custom setup or an upgrade; now the free upgrade from version 8 to 10 could change things. To ensure everything is correct, clone your old drive onto the new one using tools like Clonezilla—place it on a USB stick, boot from it, and copy one disk to another. This process must be carried out outside Windows since the drive can't be used during cloning.