How do I convert old SSD boot drive to storage in new laptop?

Paul0o0o0 · 27 Nov 2021

Hello again,

My new laptop is arriving soon and I want move the SSD boot drive from my old laptop to my new one. I want to keep everything on it except for the OS because the new laptop will have Win 11 installed. My question is: can I delete the OS on the old drive without affecting anything else installed on it, and if yes, how? If no, what would be the best way to go about preserving all installations without having to reinstall everything?

Thanks.

Samuria · 27 Nov 2021

Does it just have data as any installed software won't work

Ghot · 27 Nov 2021

Paul0o0o0 said:

Hello again,

My new laptop is arriving soon and I want move the SSD boot drive from my old laptop to my new one. I want to keep everything on it except for the OS because the new laptop will have Win 11 installed. My question is: can I delete the OS on the old drive without affecting anything else installed on it, and if yes, how? If no, what would be the best way to go about preserving all installations without having to reinstall everything?

Thanks.

Short answer... NO.

What I would do in your case, is use a free program like Minitool Partition Wizard, to shrink the OS partition as small as possible.
Then create a new partition with whatever is left over.
Then you can copy/move the stuff you want to save, to the new partition.

Then when the new laptop arrives, just delete the OS partition off of the old drive. Then all that's left will be the stuff you copy/moved to the 2nd partition.

Here is a link to the ISO image for Minitool Partition Wizard 9.0.
You can make a bootable USB stick or DVD, that you can use to delete the OS partition, when you're ready to...

Dropbox - pwfree9.zip - Simplify your life

Megahertz · 27 Nov 2021

You need to give us the specs of your old and new drive.
Your old laptop is a 6th gen Intel computer and it probably has a 2.5" drive.
Your new computer probably has a M.2 NVMe. If it doesn't have a 2.5" drive bay, you can't install the old drive on it.

If you can install the old drive into the new computer and if the old and new has same version (Home or Pro) and both drives (old and new) are UEFI-GPT:
-Make a drive image of your old drive and save it on another drive.
-When the new computer arrive, replace the new drive with the old drive and boot from it.
-As it has Win 10 it will adjust itself to the new hardware. Once working good, upgrade to win 11.

Megahertz · 27 Nov 2021

Short answer... YES.

Let us suppose your new computer has a M.2 NVMe (UEFI-GPT) and your old has a 2.5"SSD (Legacy-MBR).

- Boot from a USB Macrium Reflect (or any other drive image program) rescue drive on your new computer.
- Create a drive image of your new Win 11 M.2 NVMe drive and save it on another external drive.
- Remove the 2.5" drive from the old computer and install on a USB - SATA caddy.
- Insert the USB - SATA caddy on a USB port on the new computer.
- Clone the 2.5" drive into the M.2 NVMe drive. As the old 2.5"drive is Legacy-MBR the M.2 NVMe drive will become Legacy-MBR.
- Boot from a Win 10 installation drive, launch a CMD window and convert the cloned M.2 NVMe drive from Legacy-MBR to UEFI-GPT using mbr2gpt.exe (there is a tutorial for it).
- Boot from the Win 10 on M.2 NVMe drive. Win 10 will adjust itself to the new hardware.
- Upgrade the Win 10 to Win 11.

You will have your old computer (programs, data, etc) on your new drive running Win 11.

If anything fails you can always recover the original Win 11 from the drive image created.

spunk · 28 Nov 2021

The Windows OS is going to include all of your Apps and Programs, so If you were successful in Deleting the Windows OS, you would lose all your programs too, If that is going to happen then the fastest and easiest thing to do is to, pull the SSD/HDD out of the old laptop and attach it via a USB Adapter, to the new computer or if the laptop has room for another drive, plug it in there. Then drag and drop or copy the previous C:\Users\UserName files (ie) Documents, Pictures, Desktop, Downloads etc to the new laptop or to an External HDD. Once everything is copied over and works properly, you can Format the old HDD and use it for storage and copy the User files back to it.

Megahertz · 28 Nov 2021

spunk said:

The Windows OS is going to include all of your Apps and Programs, so If you were successful in Deleting the Windows OS, you would lose all your programs too, If that is going to happen then the fastest and easiest thing to do is to, pull the SSD/HDD out of the old laptop and attach it via a USB Adapter, to the new computer or if the laptop has room for another drive, plug it in there. Then drag and drop or copy the previous C:\Users\UserName files (ie) Documents, Pictures, Desktop, Downloads etc to the new laptop or to an External HDD. Once everything is copied over and works properly, you can Format the old HDD and use it for storage and copy the User files back to it.

Sorry spunk, that is not a solution for what OP wants to do.

Eksy61 · 28 Nov 2021

Paul0o0o0 said:

Hello again,
My new laptop is arriving soon and I want move the SSD boot drive from my old laptop to my new one. I want to keep everything on it except for the OS because the new laptop will have Win 11 installed. My question is: can I delete the OS on the old drive without affecting anything else installed on it, and if yes, how?
Thanks.

"Anything else on it" can include data files (documents and pictures), applications/programs, settings, and even license keys for those applications/programs. All of those things are candidates for migration.

There are a couple of third-party programs that claim to be able to migrate all this across dissimilar versions of Windows. Microsoft has recommended PCMover Professional for this purpose. I've never tried it myself though.

PCmover Professional – Laplink(R)

spapakons · 28 Nov 2021

The best solution is to connect your old drive via a SATA-to-USB adapter to the new computer. Clone the old drive on the new. Let it boot and update all drivers. If your old installation was UEFI (manufacturer's logo with spinning dots on boot), you can upgrade to Windows 11 directly. If your old installation was Legacy BIOS (the cyan Window logo with spinning dots on boot) then you either convert to UEFI before upgrading to 11, or hack setup to bypass compatibility check and upgrade in Legacy mode. See respective thread in Windows 11 Forum Either way you will end with Windows 11 and all your applications and data.

Paul0o0o0 · 01 Dec 2021

Sorry for the delay in answering, but there was a death in my family. I like the option of copying my data or using migration software to migrate everything except the OS on the new drive, then formatting the old one to use as storage. I don’t really need the old one, I just need everything on it, except for the OS. Obviously I’d rather not junk hardware that works just fine, but it seem much easier to migrate the data and format the drive than trying to preserve it on the old drive while removing the OS from it.
I bought a HD/SSD docking station that I can plug the SSD into, so my plan is to dock it, migrate the data, format it, and keep it docked as an extra storage drive. Unless there’s a flaw in my thinking.