Transfer EVERYTHING 1:1 from old mini PC to new mini PC

dalchina · 2 Weeks Ago

Hi,
1. Licensing- whatever you transfer as an O/S from your old PC- Win 10- will 'inherit' the digital acitvation rights of your new PC. (There's no difference between a Win 10 and 11 license).

2. Are they both Home or both Pro etc? Or are they different? If different, then that's another consideration.

3. Are both UEFI? If your old one is legacy BIOS you cannot simply clone and transfer.

4. You could take the precaution of backing up your Win 11 PC's drivers - more as a convenience. They would be downloadable from the manufacturer's site.

5. You might run into a driver issue if the new PC has a disk type not directly supported.

6. If you clone your Win 10 build and transfer it, you can then upgrade to Win 11.

Cloning vs imaging?
Whereas a clone is meant to be an exact copy of the bits on the disk (or near enough) an image is a compressed version of the used parts of the partitions imaged. Further, imaging file sets can include a full image plus differential/and/or/incremental images, the latter being differences from one of the previous images and dependent on it for restoration.

'Clone' is used loosely- and includes resizing partitions e.g. to fit a different disk.

RobinR · 1 Week Ago

Hi guys,

I've imaged the old pc to an external HDD and restored it from the external HDD to the new PC.
However, I'm experiencing 'inaccesible boot drive' SSD.
I have just purchased a premium license and activated it on a 3rd PC at home, can I make a recovery drive from this PC and use it to redeploy to the new PC?
Old pc Windows 10
3rd home PC Windows 10
External HDD image windows 10
New PC Windows 11

Pentagon · 1 Week Ago

RobinR said:

I have just purchased a premium license and activated it on a 3rd PC at home, can I make a recovery drive from this PC and use it to redeploy to the new PC?

Means what?

Inaccessible device is difficult to troubleshoot. Driver, Registry etc.
Can you go back to the "delivery" status of the new PC.

codenation · 1 Week Ago

RobinR said:

Hi guys,

I have a purchased a new HP Z2 Mini G9 Workstation PC for work.
Specs wise it's a direct upgrade from my current Terra Mini Workstation PC which still runs on Windows 10.
However, to continue the work seamlessly, I really need everything transferred 1:1.

The new Z2 mini has Windows 11 pre-installed.
My current Mini Workstation PC is connected to our Network Shared Folder, has my own MS User Account and makes use of a custom developed ERP system.

Without opening either PC's up, what would be the best way to transfer everything 1:1?
I was looking at Macrium Reflect.
My thought process was as following: image the current SSD in the current PC to a fresh external HDD, then connect the external HDD to the entirely fresh and new PC and restore the image.
I haven't even unboxed the new workstation PC yet.

Would this achieve exactly what I need?

Thanks!

Yes, I've done it before. Win11 is pretty good with finding drivers automatically. I don't see a point in their redeploy option, after win8 , microsoft fixed that issue. For any missing drivers try 3dp chip

Samuria · 1 Week Ago

If the old drive was legacy and the new bios is set to uefi, secure boot, tpm then it wont boot you have to set the bios the same as the old pc

Pentagon · 1 Week Ago

I guess you got s.th. like this:

Transfer EVERYTHING 1:1 from old mini PC to new mini PC-inaccessible_boot.png

Not easy to fix and it can take hours!

RobinR · 1 Week Ago

Pentagon said:

I guess you got s.th. like this:

Not easy to fix and it can take hours!

Any suggestions on where to start?

- - - Updated - - -

Samuria said:

If the old drive was legacy and the new bios is set to uefi, secure boot, tpm then it wont boot you have to set the bios the same as the old pc

Both are UEFI. I might try to install a fresh Windows 10 into the new PC and then use Redeploy if possible

Pentagon · 1 Week Ago

In case it's a INTEL, first I would check the "BIOS" and if you find a "VMD"-Option you have to disable that. If it has VMD enabled, it will never work. Whatever you try!

Does it boot into the Recovery Environment? It should!!!

EDIT:
What is your Product number of the new machine?
It is s.th like this: 21C18EA#ABD

RobinR · 1 Week Ago

Pentagon said:

In case it's a INTEL, first I would check the "BIOS" and if you find a "VMD"-Option you have to disable that. If it has VMD enabled, it will never work. Whatever you try!

Does it boot into the Recovery Environment? It should!!!

EDIT:
What is your Product number of the new machine?
It is s.th like this: 21C18EA#ABD

You are amazing. Disabling VMD allowed the drive to be recognised and booted as Windows.
Everything is perfect, thank you all for the help! Much appreciated

Pentagon · 1 Week Ago

OK, great and mark this thread as solved.

It also could have been solved by adding new drivers and many Registry Modifications. Last time I did it, it took 4 hours.