How To Change Hard Drive Windows 10

If y'all've been eyeing the falling prices on spacious solid-state drives but putting off an upgrade because you lot don't want the hassle of reinstalling everything, we're here to assistance. Read on as we show you how to clone your one-time HDD onto a new HDD and get your entire organization back up and running in under an 60 minutes; no reinstallation of Windows and all your apps necessary.

Why Do I Want To Do This?

Unlike popping in some new memory or adding a peripheral, upgrading a difficult bulldoze has the potential to exist a existent pain. Rather than get through the hassle of bankroll up all your documents and files, pulling your old disk, popping in a new one, formatting information technology, and reinstalling your OS (along with all your programs) and then tweaking everything to get it back the way it was, you can follow along with us here and have your onetime disk cloned, your new deejay installed, and your machine up and running again in (typically) under an hour.

We used the very technique outlined in guide to upgrade all hard drives in our office PCs; the longest bandy took 55 minutes and the shortest swap took 23 minutes. In both cases the actual time spent doing anything with the project was around 10 minutes (opening cases, running software, etc.) and the residuum was simply the overhead imposed by the hardware we were using to perform the copy.

With that kind of turn effectually, and the fiddling amount of hassle involved in really completing the procedure, suddenly those much more affordable and spacious solid-land drives are looking mighty fine.

What Do I Need?

For this tutorial you lot'll demand four things. The outset iii are must have items and the fourth is variable dependent on your hardware setup and needs.

Hard Disks: The kickoff 2, and almost obvious: you'll demand your existing hard drive and a second new hard drive. Ideally you'll be migrating from a smaller drive to a larger drive, but there are situations where you may be migrating from a larger to smaller drive. If you, for example, bought a cheap and deadening 1TB mechanical HDD on sale and discovered that it wasn't such hot disk to utilize every bit your operating system disk, y'all might be in the market for a smaller and faster 256GB SSD or the like.

RELATED: How to Migrate Your Windows Installation to a Solid-Land Drive

This tutorial is focused on upgrading the existing disk to a larger i, but as long as yous par downward your data on the old deejay to within the parameters of the new disk (eastward.thousand. you move all your music and movies off that big 1TB HDD so that the cadre operating organization, applications, etc. are within constraints of the new smaller disk) y'all'll be fine. If you want some tips for paring down, check out the grooming section of our previous and related tutorial: How To Drift Windows 7 to a Solid State Drive

Cloning Software: The 3rd thing you'll need is cloning software. At that place are some actually powerful cloning tools out at that place that require very conscientious use of their very sophisticated components. While those tools are great when y'all all the power and dash they provide, for your typical copy disk A to disk B job, they're significant overkill (and often with a wide margin for errors).Our goal is to get this done quickly, efficiently, and with very minimal chance of misstepping and as such we've opted to utilize the complimentary version of Macrium Reverberate as information technology's quite user friendly with an excellent GUI. In addition to the gratuitous software you lot'll also desire to create a recovery disc (using the free software) on either a USB bulldoze or a writable DVD.

Connection for Second Difficult Drive: Finally, you'll need to map out how exactly you're going to claw up the hard drives in lodge to clone them. If you're using a desktop computer yous may opt to simply fissure open the example and hook up the new difficult drive directly to your motherboard. If you lot're using a laptop yous probable won't accept the actress connections (or even space) for a second hard bulldoze in your automobile so you'll need to use a USB adapter similar the 1 nosotros used in this data recovery tutorial.

If y'all do opt to apply a USB adapter, we'd encourage you to use a USB 3.0 adapter on a USB three.0 port. We ran speed tests alternating between USB 2.0 and USB iii.0. Cloning a HDD over USB ii.0 made the transfer take two to three times longer.

Hard drives on paw, software downloaded, new hard drive hooked upward to your computer (be information technology via SATA ports on the motherboard or via USB adapter), and we're ready to get.

Creating the Recovery Media

The Macrium Reflect installation process is straightforward. Run the installer, launch the app, and so take a moment to create a recovery disc. Trust united states; nearly every hiccup you might meet in this process tin be mediated via the recovery disc and the concluding place y'all want to be when you demand to create a recovery disc is staring at a difficult drive mistake.

Subsequently installing Macrium Reflect, navigate via the menu bar to Other Tasks -> Create Rescue Media.

You'll be prompted to select a Windows PE or Linux recovery media. Select Windows PE then click on the Advanced push and select version 5.0. The rescue media creator will inquire if you desire a custom VIM or a default VIM. Select the default VIM.

In the final stride you'll see a review of the settings and a prompt to select what kind of media you wish to install the recovery disc on. We've opted to apply a USB drive.

When the process is complete, information technology'southward time to move on to cloning the disk. Now is the time to ensure that the new hard bulldoze is hooked upwards to your machine.

Cloning the Deejay

Hard drives hooked up and recovery media on manus, it's time to get cloning! The starting time stride is the most important stride and really the only pace you tin can really screw up. If you do spiral it up, you're going to accept a really,really, bad time.

In Macrium Reflect, select the "Disc Image" tab and wait for your operating system disk (typically Deejay 1, C:\, and labeled with a niggling Windows icon) equally seen in the screenshot below.

When you select the disk the pick "Clone this disk" will be available below the selected bulldoze. Click on it.

The next menu is where you lot make the near important selection within this unabridged tutorial. Macrium volition show you the source drive yous but selected and prompt you to select a destination.

Click on "Select a deejay to clone to…" to select your new hard drive. If your system has multiple hard drives fastened (eastward.thou. the primary C:\ drive, a few media drives like F:\, E:\, etc. and then the blank HDD you're about to use) it is critical you select the correct difficult drive. If you perform the clone operations on the wrong disk (e.grand. F:\, which has all your domicile movies on it) all the data on that disk will be gone.Double check you have selected the right difficult drive.

Once y'all have double checked that you have selected the correct destination deejay, click "Copy selected partitions." Macrium will enquire if y'all wish to perform a "forensic" or "intelligent" sector copy. "Forensic" will re-create every unmarried scrap on the hard disk, regardless of whether or not it's really in a used sector. "Intelligent" will only copy the disk sectors actually in use. We recommend you lot select the intelligent sector copy and tick "Verify File System."

When y'all're done, at that place'southward one affair you'll likely notice immediately: the partition copied in a 1-to-1 ratio to the new deejay which means if yous're upgrading from a 120GB SSD to a 512GB SSD at that place will exist a whole lot of unused space. Don't worry, nosotros tin ready that easily plenty. Simply click on the "Cloned Partition Properties" below your freshly cloned disk.

There you tin can click the "Maximum Size" button to automatically resize the existing sectionalization to utilize the full amount of available disk space.

Much amend! We didn't spend all that money upgrading to a nice spacious SSD to get out the sectionalization unexpanded. At this point, with your disk cloned and your partition expanded, information technology's time to test out the new drive.

If you're using a desktop figurer the easiest fashion to exam out your new disk is to but boot down your computer, unplug the cables from your quondam hard disk drive (the source disk), and go out the cables for the new disk (the destination disk) plugged in. If y'all're using a laptop you lot'll need to swap the hard drives.

Reboot the auto and it should kick correct up without an issue. If there's whatsoever hiccups you have two immediate options: contrary the process from the previous step and boot back to the old difficult drive or, as we'll look at in the next footstep, use the recovery media.

Deploying the Recovery Media

And so y'all booted up the freshly cloned disk and instead of a nice boot splash screen you lot got an error bulletin. Don't panic! There'south a very expert chance that your problem is very pocket-size and a quick run through with the recovery media volition mend any minor problems (like bug on the cloned disk with the master boot record or the like).

The recovery media is a breeze to use. Pop in the disk or flash drive you created, reboot your computer, and and then wait for the Windows PE and the Macrium Reflect recovery tool to outset upwards. If it does not kicking upward immediately (and especially if you're using a flash bulldoze instead of a disc) there'due south a good chance that USB booting is either turned off or low-priority in your BIOS. Reboot, load the BIOS, and ensure that USB booting is prioritized over hard drives.

The recovery media volition automatically load Macrium Reflect. You can admission the kick repair menu i of two ways. Y'all tin click Restore -> Fix Windows Boot Problems in the menu bar or yous can select the very same option from the left hand "Restore Tasks" panel.

Select your Windows installation, click "Side by side" and then "Terminate" and based on the version of Windows you lot're running the repair tool will perform the necessary steps to repair your disk such as repairing the MBR (Primary Kick Record), the BCD (Kick Configuration Data), or the like.

When it finishes and prompts you to reboot your figurer, remove the USB drive or disk and click "OK" to consummate the process.

Make clean Upward

Once you've successfully booted back into Windows and everything is running smoothly in that location'southward nothing left to practise in the cloning process. That said, at that place are a few best practices to consider. Although everything performance equally it should is a good sign (and generally indicates that it will continue to do so), nosotros recommend setting your onetime difficult drive aside (or even leaving information technology physically mounted only unplugged in your calculator instance if you lot have the space to spare) for at least a few days.

This way should anything go incorrect with your new disk you can plug your one-time deejay correct back in, reboot, and it'south like you did an instant full-disk restoration from the engagement of the cloning procedure. If everything continues to run smoothly and y'all wish to repurpose the old disk, by all ways do so: nosotros took the smaller SSDs nosotros replaced and repurposed them for machines that could utilise a snappy boot and speedy read/write but don't need lots of disk infinite.

Source: https://www.howtogeek.com/199068/how-to-upgrade-your-existing-hard-drive-in-under-an-hour/

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