Transferring hdd to new pc

I bought a new laptop (let's call it laptop 1). It has a 1 Tb standard hdd. I also have an older laptop (laptop 2) with a 1 Tb SSD and W10.

I want to move the SSD from laptop 2 to the new one and am considering several options that I would like advice about.

1. Just replace the hdd on the new laptop 1 with the SSD from laptop 2. They both have W 10. I suspect that won't work because of the different hardware would require different drivers.
a) Am I right? Or will Windows 10 automatically install the correct drivers for the new hardware?
b) Am I better off starting fresh?

2. I have image backups of the existing older W10 pc but thought to take this opportunity to reinstall all my programs in the fresh w10 installation. Is that a good idea? Worth the extra effort?

3. I'd like to transfer at least my Windows and installed programs "settings" from the older w10 pc. to the new one. I read that "Windows Easy Transfer" used to do this but is no longer available for W 10. Is there a free alternative for W 10? Another way to do this?

Any other suggestions?

Thanks

IF you have a backup just put the drive in there is a good chance it will find drivers but if it's a lot different it may deactivate

Samuria said:

IF you have a backup just put the drive in there is a good chance it will find drivers but if it's a lot different it may deactivate

W10 is good at finding drivers. It shouldn't deactivate if the machine you put it in already had a digital licence for THE SAME EDITION of Windows 10 (Home or Pro).

When faced with completely new hardware W10 will check the hardware ID of the system it finds itself on against the Microsoft Activation servers. A digital licence is only valid for one edition, Home or Pro, but if both PCs had the same edition before the swap then there should be no activation problems.

If the SSD is the type that looks like a small hard drive, it's just SATA and will work when plugged into any SATA port and be recognized by the computer as any other hard drive.

An NVMe SSD is a circuit card type and plugs into an M.2 slot on the motherboard.

There are always advantages to a clean install of Windows, but if you are not seeing any issues, I wouldn't take the effort to do the clean install.

Thank you. Just what I needed to know.

Curious said:

I transfered the ssd from my old laptop to the new laptop. Then when I powered it up it could not find an operating system. ...

First check the basics, was the ssd originally in a legacy MBR system and the new machine is set for uefi (or vice versa)? Check your bios settings.

If the bios is set up OK, then boot problems like this are not unusual and easily fixed.

Macrium Reflect has a tool for fixing boot problems. If you do not have Macrium, then download Kyhi's recovery drive and boot from that. This includes Macrium Reflect (and many other essential tools) in a bootable Windows environment.

Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk - Windows 10 Forums

You are a genius.
It's great to have the Navy behind you.
I got to the BIOS settings. It was set for uefi. I enabled 'legacy support' and it booted right up. Thank you!!

@Bree hit it first.