Can I put 10 on a new machine that comes with 11?

Thread title says it all. In the future when I replace one of my Win10 laptops, new laptops will come with 11. So will I be able to put 10 on the new laptop?

cbiweb hello and welcome to tenforums ,

Yes you will be able to put Windows 10 on your new PC.

Clean Install Windows 10

I would first make a full backup of your Windows 11 image Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect

If possible,keep 10 and 11 on separate drives.

joeandmarg0 said:

If possible,keep 10 and 11 on separate drives.

Why?

joeandmarg0 said:

If possible,keep 10 and 11 on separate drives.

NavyLCDR said:

Why?

It is a bit awkward moving the namespace folders every time you want to boot into the other os.

I do it sometimes when testing, but its not really practical for long term use.

SIW2 said:

It is a bit awkward moving the namespace folders every time you want to boot into the other os.

I do it sometimes when testing, but its not really practical for long term use.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by moving namespace folders. Do you mean the user library folders like Documents, Pictures, Downloads, etc? Why would it be different having Windows 10 and Windows 11 on two separate physical drives vs 2 separate partitions on the same drive? My two main computers have 2 physical drives. 1 drive holds my user data, such as Documents, Pictures, etc. The other physical drive has separate partitions for my main Windows OS (which is now 11) multi-booting with insider versions. Each OS points to the user folders that are on the physical drive separate from the drive with the OSes.

Whether the OSes are on different partitions of the same physical driver, or on separate physical drives it's the same. And if you don't want separate partitions, there is always VHDX virtual hard drives that you an run OSes from.

I think you mean 2 different drives on the same disk. That is easy enough

If you have 2 different os on the same drive you end up faffling about a bit.

It's impossible to have two seperate OSes share the same partition (at least with Windows), with the exception of creating virtual drives in VHDX files. You can have multiple VHDX files in the same partition.

I just posted that I do it sometimes.






The os that boots up is the one whose namespace folders are on the root. So you swap em around by moving those folders in and out. As I am sure you know, MOVE is almost instant, but it has to be done from outside.