Transferring free Windows 10 to new HD?

eightate · 18 Oct 2017

I will try to get to the point but it's been years since i've needed to post online about help with PCs. It's surprising how little clarification I seem to be able to get on this despite many articles and forum posts about a similiar issues I've read.

My HP Envy 700-047c came with Windows 8. I upgraded to 8.1 and then onto Windows 10 with the free upgrade in 2015. Problem is I am 95% sure my Hard Drive is dying as my PC becomes slow and freezes suddenly. Doing a refresh seemed to help this issue but it came back after a week and now feels like I am running on borrowed time.

My question is can I simply buy a new HD and plug it where my old one was. Then somehow install windows 10 without losing my free license? I seem to find contradicting info about this everywhere. Does the media creation tool when burned to disk format technically count as a boot disk? Or does it not? I would hope I could just make one and it auto boot from it and install to the new hard drive I eventually get. But nothing is ever that simple.

Unfortunately my PC came with no disks at all. Just a recovery drive that there was no explanation on how to use. Doesn't seem like that would help me now though as I would imagine thats for resetting my current HD not adding the original factory settings to a new HD. And if if it did do that...im unsure if I could still use 10 without having to buy it.

Thanks to anyone who read that. Yikes, I hope the edit fixed that everything got put into one large paragraph.

Samuria · 18 Oct 2017

Welcome to the forum. It's a good time to do a new install if you download the latest ISO it's the new fall update so you create a boot DVD put in the new disk and install it will activate with no problems and you have a clean new version of Windows

eightate · 18 Oct 2017

Thank you for the welcome and a quick response.

Yes but how do you go about making a boot disc? The Media Creators tool. If you make a disc using that does it also function as a bootable disc for a fresh HD? While reading online I seemed to come across disagreements about that. Some places people seemed to think that was only for upgrading a version of windows. Then others seemed to say it was also a boot function.

Made fresh partions on XP years ago many times. Never again since.

Barman58 · 18 Oct 2017

The licence for Windows 10 is stored on Microsoft's own servers Not on the users system as used to be the case- due to this change the activation of a new re-install should be automatic.

Further Information is here ... Download Windows 10 ISO File Installation Upgrade Tutorials

What I would advise before you start the installation is to Get your licence tied to a Microsoft ID, ( you just need to use an existing MS ID ( Outlook/ Live/Hotmail Email address), or create a New Microsoft account [Free], and log into windows 10 a time or two, the licence information will change to show you are licenced and Linked to an account.

What this allows is part of the free licence demands that you are re-installing to the same hardware, Normally this would not worry about a new disk but the link to a Microsoft account means that it's possible to re-install on a completely new system and remain licenced ( you need to not keep using the old hardware of course), which gives better peace of mind.

I would also hold off with the download of the New version 1709 16299.19 of windows 10 ( Fall Creators Update), for a few days, as it was only released yesterday to general users so the servers are under a lot of load at present .

cereberus · 18 Oct 2017

eightate said:

Thank you for the welcome and a quick response.

Yes but how do you go about making a boot disc? The Media Creators tool. If you make a disc using that does it also function as a bootable disc for a fresh HD? While reading online I seemed to come across disagreements about that. Some places people seemed to think that was only for upgrading a version of windows. Then others seemed to say it was also a boot function.

Made fresh partions on XP years ago many times. Never again since.

I advise you make a bootable flash drive - easier and quicker. There is an option to do that in the media creation tool.

To create a bootable dvd, you have to download iso, mount it as a drive, and copy all the files to dvd with appropriate burning software (windows 10 has native burning capability) remembering to finalise the disk.

TBH using a dvd rather than a flash drive is only really necessary if pc is so old, it will not boot from a usb drive,, but if that was the case, Windows 10 might not run very well and may get driver issues.

Unfortunately, many people are so ill informed, and you get duff information. You have come to the greatest Windows 10 site in the world for information (I really mean that - you should look in the tutorials section. No site in the world has such great information in a clear and easy to understand manner.

The answer to your question is a dvd (or usb flash drive) can do either, upgrade or clean install.

It depends how you use it:-

To upgrade, you insert drive in pc whilst running windows, and run setup.exe from the directory's root drive.

To clean install, you boot from the drive, and the installer takes over and does the rest. Just select custom install, and delete all partitions - windows does the rest. Obviously back up valuable data first.

Barman58 · 18 Oct 2017

Full instructions for download and subsequent creation of Install media, ( Disk or USB) are given in the link I provided

NavyLCDR · 18 Oct 2017

I suggest you also export the third party device drivers before removing the old hard drive. Get yourself a USB flash drive. When you insert it, it should get a drive letter. Let's say it gets G:. Create a folder on it called Drivers. You can make the folder name whatever you want, Drivers is just an example. Open a Command Prompt (Admin) or PowerShell (Admin) and run the following command:

dism /online /export-driver /destination:G:\Drivers

Change the path in red to match the drive letter and folder for your USB flash drive. Then when you do the clean install of Windows 10 by booting the computer from the DVD or USB flash drive you make from the ISO file, if you end up with devices in device manager that are either unknown or with an exclamation point on them, you can right click on them, select update drivers, and point the driver installer to the folder you saved on the USB flash drive. Make sure the box is checked for subfolders. Then windows should load the driver that you previously saved.