Booting Existing Windows 10 Image from USB

Hi guys,

Seeking some advice from the experts here.

I have a laptop that has a 2.5" hard drive (HDD) bay which accepts either a SATA HDD or SSD. Occupying that bay currently, is a 5400RPM 2TB HDD with Windows 10 & all my apps installed on it which I have been using for the past year or so.

It is rather slow, hence my intention to upgrade to a 1TB SSD. Unfortunately, my laptop only has a single 2.5" HDD bay with no M.2 slots, so I can use either the SATA HDD or SSD.

My plan is as follows:

1) Remove 2TB SATA HDD from HDD bay
2) Slot 1TB SSD into HDD bay
3) Place 2TB SATA HDD into a HDD enclosure (USB3.0)
4) Change BIOS boot options to boot only from USB
5) Connect HDD enclosure to laptop via USB & boot

Would this work as the 2TB SATA HDD already has Windows 10 installed on it along with the necessary boot partition? Any caveats, like Secure Boot etc.? The 2TB SATA HDD is not encrypted using Bitlocker or other encryption technologies.

If this is possible, then the next steps would be to install Macrium Reflect on the 2TB SATA HDD & clone its contents to the 1TB SSD in the HDD bay.

Thanks for the advice!

A more certain solution would be to install Macrium Reflect Free before removing the HDD. Then create a Macrium Reflect Rescue USB flash drive. Remove the HDD, install the SSD, boot the computer from the Macrium Reflect Rescue USB flash drive and clone the old HDD connected by USB to the SSD. The only added expense is 1 USB flash drive.

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Does your laptop has a ODD drive (CD / DVD)?

If it does, you can replace the ODD with a caddy to add a HDD or SSD.
I have an old laptop (Sony VAIO) that I added a 120G SSD for Windows and programs and use the HDD for data only.
It is a way to have the speed of a SSD and the space of a HDD at low cost. Works very well.

selden said:

Unfortunately, Windows 10 will not boot from USB, which is why you have to clone from the SATA drive to the drive connected to USB. The resulting clone will be bootable when it's plugged into SATA.

Windows 10 will boot from USB.

NavyLCDR said:

Windows 10 will boot from USB.

But you have to do some changes on it so it will boot from USB don't you?.
Much easier to insert the target drive on the USB caddy and then clone the drive. If successful, exchange one by the other.