Install new SSD for EUFI and still save all programs & settings?  

BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP

Please make sure you make an image backup of your curremt system before doing anything. Nothing is likely to go wrong, but if it does, with a good backup using Macrium Reflect to an external hard drive, you can always recover. It's absolutely worth the time and cost of an external hard drive to do this.

Ztruker said:

BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP

Backup is of course always important. However, if the OP follows the instructions I posted, original Windows system SSD will be removed and replaced with the new disk before any changes will be made. In worst case scenario, if for any reason my suggestion does not work, putting the old SSD back makes everything just as it was.

Kari

Good point Kari, sorry, I missed that. I'll go read it again.

Kari, that is so very sweet! I glanced at it before, but really read it this time. I love it.
Will give it a try later tonight and see how it goes.

Thanks

I created the install.wim from my existing installation and it ended up at 111GB, a tad larger for a Recovery partition. It's more like a image backup. Pretty slick though as I can stuff that in a partition on one of my 2TB 7.2K drives and set it up as a Recovery partition using the batch file from your tutorial then I have in effect, a self loading image of my current C: OS drive with all the data intact, including my 3 Oracle VirtualBox VMs.

Macrium is easier but this is more fun.

If I ever do a Clean install I will do as the tutorial says, and setup my accounts and customizations but no data or VMs then redo the install.wim.

I setup a 120GB recovery partition then replaced install.esd with the install.wim I created (111GB). Ran the batch file and it got added to my boot menu. Booted it and it started up just fine.

Now I got confused. As usual during an install, I was booting from X: so I looked at X: and there was no sources\install.wim. X: was not mapped to my 120GB recovery partition on the 2TB hard drive as I thought it would be. X:\Users only has a Public folder, none of my defined folders so I think I'm missing some understanding of how installation really works.

I guess I won't know until I can actually complete the "recovery" which I'm not willing to do at this time.