The “right” solution to moving Windows from one drive to another, or from one machine to another, is to reinstall it from scratch. Sometimes Windows will recover some of the information as it notices something’s changed, but often it will not. Things like hardware selection, registry values, and configuration options are all determined and written during the installation based on the characteristics of the machine at that time.Įven if you were able to “move” the operating system to a different drive with a simple copy - say a second drive that you expected to dual-boot from - that move will invalidate many of the options that were originally determined at setup time. All else requires installationĪs I mentioned above, Windows is a very complex operating system, and installing it is an intricate process that involves more than just copying a few files. We’ve not “moved” the operating system to another drive - say from C: to D: - we’ve simply replaced the hard drive that is C: and put the data back on it. The biggest caveat to this scenario is that the only thing that’s changed is the hard drive, nothing else. You restore the most recent backup image to the replacement hard drive.You create a nightly backup image of your hard drive.The net result is that you can indeed “copy” one hard disk to another and then have that replacement hard drive take the place of the original. It copies absolutely everything that’s on a hard disk, making no changes as it does so. Rather than copying files from one hard disk to another, imaging (or cloning) a hard drive operates at a much lower level. It’s an important scenario for disaster recovery: hard disk replacement. There is one scenario where a form of copying will work. More here: How Do I Transfer My System to a Replacement Drive? Imaging might work
It’s a lot more than just copying a few files.Ĭonceptually, replacing a hard drive is pretty simple, but the devil is in those details. As we’ll see below, that process doesn’t copy an existing installation, but is designed to install and set up everything the operating system requires to run. Files that have been intentionally hidden by the Windows installation.Įven if it did copy everything, placing an operating system on a drive requires an installation or setup program.The boot loader, required to load Windows at start time.While that approach will copy a lot of files, it won’t copy everything. For example, you might click on the C:\ drive in Windows File Explorer, and then drag and drop that to another hard disk on the same machine. I’m assuming from your question that you literally want to copy the files you find on your hard disk to another hard disk. Whether your license will transfer depends on the differences in hardware.A reinstallation of Windows is typically required for all other scenarios.You may be able to copy an image of the hard disk to another.You can’t simply copy Windows from one hard disk to another.
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