One of the most irritating things about getting a new computer with a clean Windows 10 installation is the dreaded task of having to move all of your user data over from your old PC. Not to mention reinstalling your applications, getting your desktop, favorites and emails moved, and all of the other tasks that go along with trying to make your new machine look and act just like your old one.
In corporate environments they have tools for getting this done pretty efficiently. But for the average personal user it’s a big job that, no matter how careful you are, often ends up never being quite “right” at the end of the day.
And if you are at all like me, you’ve probably read a bunch articles that all say you absolutely CAN’T simply take your entire drive out of your current PC and put it in a new one. The prophecies of doom on that manoeuver range from a blue-screen-of-death all the way up to a tear in the space-time continuum. Okay, maybe not that. But lots of people seem to be convinced that it can’t be done, anyway.
So in the interests of scientific discovery, I decided I’d give it a try myself and see what happens. In the video below, I take a hard drive from an HP-built mini-PC with an Intel i5 6500T processor and put it into an all-AMD system with discrete graphics.
Did it work? Or have I unintentionally put into motion a series of events that will lead to the end of life on this planet as we know it? Watch and find out!
Things That Occurred To Me Afterward
So just to be really, really clear: the fact that my PC didn’t spontaneously burst into flames doesn’t necessarily make this a good idea. I didn’t leave the computer with this setup, so who knows what would have happened over time. Maybe nothing. Or maybe something. That will be an experiment that I’ll leave for someone else to try.
That said, doing a clean Windows 10 installation on a newly-formatted drive is still the gold standard for reliability and performance. But if you are a bit lazy, or adventurous, maybe you want to try this for yourself as a shortcut. Just make sure you have good data backups on hand, just in case.
If I were to do this again, and more seriously, I’d first uninstall my chipset drivers (especially for video, sound and the network card) before I moved the Windows 10 installation drive over to the new PC. That would lessen the chance of conflicts and make it less likely that Windows would insist on looking for hardware that is no longer there.
So the conclusion to this highly-accurate and scientific experiment is: Can it be done? You betcha! Is it a good idea? Probably not.
A Note About Windows Activation
One question that may arise out of this experiment: How does Microsoft view this from a Windows 10 activation standpoint? The good news on that is that the vast majority of Windows computers have what Microsoft calls a “digital license”. With a digital license your hardware has been registered on the Microsoft servers as having a license for a particular version of Windows 10 (such as Home or Pro). As long as the transferred drive has the SAME version of Windows as the new machine has a license for, you are good to go! Microsoft really doesn’t care where it came from at that point.
If you do NOT have a digital license, you’ll have to activate Windows with your activation key, so make sure you have that before you start making changes.
You can check your PC’s activation status in Windows 10 by going to: Settings – Update and Security – Activation
However, if the drive has a different version of Windows than the machine it’s going into has a license for, you’ll likely need to go out and purchase a license for that version if you want to activate it.
Lastly, Microsoft has an “official” way of doing this using a utility called “Sysprep”, but honestly, it kind of feels like a lot more work.
