Seeking best strategy for moving drive with W10 OS to new machine

I have a 6 year old laptop in which I recently replaced the drive with a 2TB Samsung NVMe running W10 Pro with a retail key (probably irrelevant) . I ordered a new laptop that comes with a 1TB drive. The new laptop comes with Windows 11 Pro installed. Moving from Dell to HP

First decision: Stick with W10 or go with W11. As I am moving the W11 out, the OS on it is irrelevant with my future plan. I love W10. I use W11 at work and I am in no rush to switch however I know end of life for W10 will be Oct 2025 (about 15/16 months away)

Second decision: Should I do a full wipe before moving?

Other facts:
I have a license for Macrium Reflect which could be useful
I have USB enclosures which could be helpful.
I do use Onedrive and have a sub to family however I still have files scattered in local documents, desktop , root of C drive (like ADB tools) etc....

I probably will not use the drive removed from the new PC , may list it on eBay. I will install an older drive into my old pc. II don't feel comfortable selling it because it has too many issues and will likely keep it as a backup.

So posting here hoping to get some tips and suggetions for best way to tackle this task. I probably need a better data and program strategy so this can be easier in the future

Thanks in advance.

Boot the new computer and export the drivers onto a USB flash drive:

Move the SSD from the old computer to the new computer and try to boot from it. The most likely sticking point may be if the new computer requires Intel Rapid Storage Technology (IRST) drivers to boot.

I would clone the old disk on the new disk, just in case Windows is damaged by trying to boot on the new laptop. I would then swap the disks, so I have the larger drive on the new laptop, then try to boot it. Of course you should enable CSM (aka Legacy BIOS) in the UEFI firmware, Boot settings if the old installation is MBR. Most laptops can boot either in new UEFI mode (GPT disk) or Legacy BIOS (MBR disk), but CSM is not always enabled by default. Wait for Windows to detect new hardware and attempt to install drivers. First boot will take much longer than a typical boot. If you see the login screen or your desktop, it means the upgrade was successful. All you need is to install new drivers and probably activate Windows, Office and other applications again. If you connect to the internet, Windows Update should install most drivers, but I would recommend to manually download latest graphics driver to improve performance. If you ask me, I would have downloaded all drivers from manufacturer and install them manually to maximise compatibility and performance, I would not trust Windows Update.

We're all different in the approach we take. Some people here have no problem taking a drive out of one system, installing it into another, and hoping Windows will sort all the drivers and activations when the machine boots....IF it boots. I have taken this approach only once, but both systems were extremely similar in hardware. But, whatever works for others is fine by me. It's their hardware.

Personally, I'm more a 'better safe then sorry' kind of gal so I take the time to image both drives.
I then deactivate any licensed software on old machine, install the drive in the new machine and do a clean install, reinstall my software, and then restore all my personal files from the Macrium image (or let Onedrive do it if you use Onedrive) I get any missing drivers from manufacturer but usually there are few.
But that's just me. Is it a lot of work? Yes, it is.

Here's my reasons for doing a clean install:
1. I do not feel comfortable with a ton of incorrect, unused drivers on my drive that might come back and bite me in the butt later, nor do I want to have a brand new machine with a lot of junk carried over from an old machine....and ALL old machines accumulate junk. A new machine deserves to be clean. More importantly, I deserve a clean machine.
2. Chances are the old machine is optioned CSM. UEFI boots twice as fast as CSM. UEFI supports hard drives larger than 2TB. It is more secure than CSM since it offers secure boot.
3. If the 2 machines are mixed between Intel and AMD I would never swap out a drive for any reason.
4. I don't want to go thu hell trying to get all my software licensed on the new hardware. Many times these licenses are tied to the hardware you activated it on. By deactivating and re-activating I do not run into this problem..

However.....
If I was going use my Windows 10 install on the new machine, rather than swapping out the drives and hoping for the best, I would first make images of both systems with Macrium, swap the drives, make sure new machine bios settings agree with the old (in relation to CSM vs UEFI and RAID vs AHCI)
Then restore the Win10 image to the larger drive once it's in the new machine using Macrium's Redeploy to new hardware feature. (If RAID is involved I would have the RAID drivers for new machine available to insert during the restore since Macrium won't recognize the drive.) After restore, If the machine won't boot, use Macrium's fix boot feature.
Worst comes to worst, you have the images of both machines to get back to where you started. Just make note of the bios settings you changed.

It's your choice how you do it and whatever you feel comfortable with going forward.

The whole point of moving an old Windows installation to a new computer is to avoid wasting a couple of days (for us even more) to take a full backup of your data and reinstall reconfigure the new installation from scratch. In a typical office PC all you need is Microsoft Office, a web browser and 3-4 other applications. It is not a big deal to reinstall. But in a typical home computer we are talking about hundreds of GB of data to backup and over 15 applications to reinstall. A quick look at my Installed Apps list has over 200 entries. Yes, I agree, I don't use all of them every day, but I hate the idea that I might need one of them and I have lost the installer or the license for it. I would rather have some unused applications installed than miss one.

For that reason, I prefer to try cloning the old installation on the new computer first (not use the old disk directly), and IF it doesn't boot do a clean installation. I believe the time I will spend installing some drivers and troubleshooting some minor bugs will be much less than the time required for starting from scratch.

spapakons said:

The whole point of moving an old Windows installation to a new computer is to avoid wasting a couple of days (for us even more) to take a full backup of your data and reinstall reconfigure the new installation from scratch. In a typical office PC all you need is Microsoft Office, a web browser and 3-4 other applications. It is not a big deal to reinstall. But in a typical home computer we are talking about hundreds of GB of data to backup and over 15 applications to reinstall. A quick look at my Installed Apps list has over 200 entries. Yes, I agree, I don't use all of them every day, but I hate the idea that I might need one of them and I have lost the installer or the license for it. I would rather have some unused applications installed than miss one.

For that reason, I prefer to try cloning the old installation on the new computer first (not use the old disk directly), and IF it doesn't boot do a clean installation. I believe the time I will spend installing some drivers and troubleshooting some minor bugs will be much less than the time required for starting from scratch.

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What are reasons you think it would not boot? Its Windows 10 64 bit latest version. Oh one more snag though, its bitlocker encrypted, I enter a 10 digit pin everytime I boot up.

If the difference in hardware is not extreme (such as from Intel CPU to AMD or vice versa), usually it boots successfully at the new computer and installs new drivers. This way you keep both your data and apps.

I recommend to unlock BitLocker before moving the disk, just in case. You can enable BitLocker again in new system.

spapakons said:

If the difference in hardware is not extreme (such as from Intel CPU to AMD or vice versa), usually it boots successfully at the new computer and installs new drivers. This way you keep both your data and apps.

I recommend to unlock BitLocker before moving the disk, just in case. You can enable BitLocker again in new system.

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Yeah , I am going from a Dell i7-8550U to an HP i7-1355u

It should work. Try it.

spapakons said:

It should work. Try it.

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So I noticed the new PC which I just booted into Windows 11 to do an export of the drives, did some automatic updates and forced me to restart and then I got these HP Sure Start errors when the update trying to update "Secure boot keys"

I then decided to update the bios and getting the warning that it needs to suspend bitlocker. So while I did sign in with my MS account, I was shocked to see bitlocker turned on by default on the brand new machine

So now I am first decrypting the new drive, then I will update the bios, then I will go into the bios and disable the HP Sure Start thing.

Then I will export the drivers to a usb stick

On my old pc , I am currently decrypting. I will then clone the drive to the HP drive and swap them.

Fingers crossed. Please let me know if any of this sounds incorrect.

So if I am moving drive to new machine without formatting it what about the existing system/oem partitions? Moving from Dell to HP.

You can move only the other partitions in the order they are without the Dell Support one.

spapakons said:

You can move only the other partitions in the order they are without the Dell Support one.

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But aren't partitions 2&3 Dell Specific recovery images? Am I able to delete them and some how put HP recovery images or reclaim the free space?

Also, say I have some permissions set. They refer to administrators as computername/admin for example. Will things get messed up if the computer name changes or will transferring the drive keep the name?

Probably the smaller contains the drivers and the larger the recovery image. You can remove both.