I am thinking of buying a new SSD and adding it to my desktop PC
I have a Macrium 7 backup image of Windows 10 as well as other program files and data files of my current HDD.
Is it possible to restore my macrium W10 image to a new SSD and leave the current HDD intact with the OS and data files if I make the SSD the bootup drive using my PC's BIOS?
Yes- but take the HDD out of your system if you wish to leave Win 10 on it.
A strict reading of the license terms prohibits two instances of an OS being installed without a separate license for each.
Discussed here e.g.
Install Win 10 on two hard disks, same computer - Windows 10 Forums
Note that a typical EFI installation of Win 10 consists of 4 partitions.
Hi there.
@dalchina
No need to remove the other W10 HDD. There 's a lot of mis-understanding about this.
you CAN legally have windows installed on 2 HDD's (SSD's / HDD/SSD Mix).
What you are NOT allowed to do is run two instances of the same Windows concurrently.
You are of course allowed to have backups of Windows at all times and whether this is a Macrium image type backup or an identical copy or clone of a Windows HDD is immaterial. There's no requirement either that these backups have to be stored offline either although in the case of backups it's usually a good idea not to have them online.
All the EULA states is that each Windows installation must be licensed for the machine it's running on. This means no concurrent running of the windows instances so you couldn't run the cloned W10 SSD on an identical PC unless you had 2 licences. This is also true for any Windows VM's you create -- you can make as many as you like but only 1 with that license may be running at a time anywhere on your network. You are quite at liberty to boot either the W10 HDD or the SSD at will in this case as only 1 instance is running at it will be licensed.
For people making Windows VM's -- if you copy the VM to another machine / HDD and you are using vmware - at ist boot of the moved / copied vm specify "I moved it" rather than "I copied it" to the start up prompt --this will preserve activation. Don't run more than 1 concurrently though as this also conflicts with the EULA agreement.
Cheers
jimbo
Thanks for your input guys, but your responses leave me somewhat confused.......
Can I or can't I restore only my W10 backup image to a new SSD
and use the existing HDD (which includes the W10 OS)
if configure my bios so that my PC uses the new SSD as the bootup drive ????
Yes you can restore from HDD to SSD using Macrium, I did and it works.
It is pointless to discuss the license (you can check it if you want in C:\Windows\system32\license.rtf) as it just says "Under this agreement, we grant you the right to install and run one instance of the software on your device (the licensed device), for use by one person at a time, so long as you comply with all the terms of this agreement. "
Whether that means you aren't allowed a backup I'm not qualified to say but considering RAID would make duplicate copies I'd agree with @jimbo45 - if you run one copy at a time on the same machine then you are fine. This is what most insiders do for example.
In any case it works so don't worry about it.
@lx0 7Thanks for your response.....
so to be clear you restored only a W10 backup image to your new SSD and left the existing SSD as is including the W10 OS??
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