Swap drive with Windows 10

Hi,

I had a laptop that was upgraded to Windows 10 on SSD drive. Since i have bought another Laptop that came with normal drive. I have Windows 10 installed on new laptop.

I want to swap SSD from old laptop to new laptop. Is it matter of just replacing the hardrives?

If I do swap the drive it will have Windows that was activated on older laptop. I have product stickers on both laptop however both were upgraded from windows 7 Home Edition.

Please suggest best way of doing this?

First thoughts, the new laptop came with media for recovery or do you know of a recovery partition on it ? Putting that SSD on it with an activated Windows 10 from another older laptop may not work, for one different system drivers on that SSD then the new one and activation process from Microsoft due to knowing which system. I would regularly in this case reformat and install Windows 10 again on it, but this new laptops OS could be been an OEM of Windows 10, so if download another copy of Windows 10 i am not sure then even though you have the product key.

Think most would say clone the HDD from the newer laptop drive to the new SSD, not familiar with the process but they are software to do this. Similar to this here Macrium Reflect http://www.howtogeek.com/199068/how-...under-an-hour/

Take the SSD out of the old laptop and put it in the new laptop. You might have to do two things - you might have to change the product key to match that on the new laptop, and you might have to install any drivers for the new laptop that Windows 10 does not include natively.

You can export drivers from the new laptop before the switch by running from an administrator command prompt:

dism /online /export-driver /destination:e:\DriversW10

The path in red will be to a storage location that you set up to hold the drivers.

And if things go horribly wrong, then OMG!.... just put the old HDD back in.

jds63 said:

First thoughts, the new laptop came with media for recovery or do you know of a recovery partition on it ? Putting that SSD on it with an activated Windows 10 from another older laptop may not work, for one different system drivers on that SSD then the new one and activation process from Microsoft due to knowing which system. I would regularly in this case reformat and install Windows 10 again on it, but this new laptops OS could be been an OEM of Windows 10, so if download another copy of Windows 10 i am not sure then even though you have the product key.

Think most would say clone the HDD from the newer laptop drive to the new SSD, not familiar with the process but they are software to do this. Similar to this here Macrium Reflect http://www.howtogeek.com/199068/how-...under-an-hour/

Old laptop came with recovery partition and Windows 7 was pre installed. I have upgraded to windows 10. On new laptop it has come Win 7 also which has been upgraded also to windows 10. Both windows 10 are activated.

NavyLCDR said:

Take the SSD out of the old laptop and put it in the new laptop. You might have to do two things - you might have to change the product key to match that on the new laptop, and you might have to install any drivers for the new laptop that Windows 10 does not include natively.

You can export drivers from the new laptop before the switch by running from an administrator command prompt:

dism /online /export-driver /destination:e:\DriversW10

The path in red will be to a storage location that you set up to hold the drivers.

And if things go horribly wrong, then OMG!.... just put the old HDD back in.

Yeah that would be an ideal by replacing SSD to new laptop. Can i still use Windows 7 sticker that is on the laptop to activate Windows 10 by changing product code?

Yeah i would need to update the drivers etc.

He he :) If everything fails I shall put old drive back in. You scared me here :)

Since the new laptop has already had a Windows 7 to 10 upgrade done on it, the Windows 10 Will stay activated as long as it is the same version, Home or Pro.

NavyLCDR said:

Since the new laptop has already had a Windows 7 to 10 upgrade done on it, the Windows 10 Will stay activated as long as it is the same version, Home or Pro.

Does it not matter that SSD had Windows 10 upgraded from win 7 using different key?

No. Digital entitlement is saved and retrieved by the unique hardware ID that the product key has no affect on.

Here i was not sure this new laptop came with Windows 10 or not, so having Windows 7 and upgraded to Windows 10 makes things a bit easier.

jds63 said:

Here i was not sure this new laptop came with Windows 10 or not, so having Windows 7 and upgraded to Windows 10 makes things a bit easier.

Correct. That is what I thought originally too. And I've done almost exactly the same thing the OP is talking about. I built myself a new computer. Both my father-in-law's and my old computer were upgrades to Windows 10 from Windows 7 with digital entitlements. When I built my new computer, I installed the hard drive from my father-in-law's computer into my old one (which was an upgrade for him). Since both my old computer and his old computer both had digital entitlements, his Windows 10 stayed activated by retrieving the digital entitlement which was on Microsoft activation servers for my old computer.