In this post, you’ll learn how to move OS to SSD without cloning your system disk with a step-by-step guide.
My two computers are with their own Microsoft account and run Windows 10 Home 64-bit. Now, I'd like to change my disks on these two PCs, one would be to simply replace the present HDD with another 1TB HDD, while the other would be to upgrade to a 2TB SSD with a GPT scheme. I don't want to clone the whole disks, how do I move just my OS to my SSD?
- Question from tomshardware
Assume you installed Windows 10 on an HDD and wish to boot your machine from an SSD or a larger HDD. The most common method is to make a clean installation. However, a new OS installation is time-consuming and inconvenient since you must reinstall apps and data kept on the C drive.
There is a method to move the previously installed Windows OS to SSD without reinstalling or cloning if you want to maintain all current data on the system drive. You have the option of moving Windows from HDD to SSD or another HDD.
The thing is if you want to do a foolproof OS migration, a professional moving tool is necessary. Since your PC needs not only a C drive to boot but for some other hidden files, it’s quite difficult to move OS manually.
Talking about the OS moving tool, there’s also something you need to pay attention to. Normally, tools on the market are using the cold migration way, which means you’ll reboot your computer several times to complete the move.
If you want to directly use the old disk as the data disk without restarting many times, you can choose those tools that employ the live migration way to move OS. This way is also called hot clone supporting OS migration task while PC is running. So you don’t need to cease all running programs to reboot your PC several times.
Here, we recommend you AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional to make an easy and safe OS migration. The “Migrate OS to SSD” feature can migrate all data in the Windows installation files and folders, boot files, and configurations from your computer to a new drive.
There are no limits to the partition scheme of two disks, you can migrate OS from MBR/GPT to MBR/GPT disk flexibly. And with the live migration way, you can still run the PC during the whole process. Now, you can follow the steps to move OS.
Step 1. Connect the target disk to your computer and ensure it can be detected; install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant. Then, click "Migrate OS" under "Clone" in the top toolbar and click "Next" to continue.
Step 2. Choose an unallocated space on the target disk as the location. If there is no unallocated space, you can check “I want to delete all partitions on disk 2 to migrate system to the disk” and then click "Next".
Step 3. YOu can resize the partition on the SSD.
Step 4. Click "Finish" to continue.
Step 5. You’ll back to the main interface where you can preview the result of the operation. To commit it, click “Apply” and “Proceed”.
Then the target disk will be your system disk now.
If you need to clone your whole disk to avoid reinstalling all applications, you can choose the “Clone Disk”. This function can help you clone the entire disk.
Now you know how to move OS to SSD without cloning. To ensure your OS can run as usual, a robust OS migration tool is a great choice. With AOMEI Partition Assistant, you can use do an SSD upgrade without cloning. And there are more practical features like moving installed programs, converting file system without formatting, and so on.
If you have Server devices that need efficient management, AOMEI Partition Assistant Server is on your service.