How to Transfer Windows 10 from HDD to SSD

Gone are the days of those old, slow hard drives that take forever to boot up, the new thing in the town is SSDs. They are compact, fast, and less prone to damage and that is the reason why you will see everyone preferring SSDs over HDD for their system’s storage. In case you have an old system, and you want to transfer Windows 10 from HDD to SSD (which you have installed newly), this is the perfect place for you.

In this article, we are going to show you some of the easiest steps to transfer Windows 10 from HDD to SSD. To transfer Windows 10 contents from HDD to SSD without reinstalling the Windows, you will have to clone the system partition to the SSD, and we are going to show you how  

When to Transfer Windows 10 from HDD to SSD?

One of the very first cases will be if you are facing slow bootup issues, hard drive failure and then you decide to install an SSD on your system. In that case, you want your OS files to be on the SSD and for that, you will have to transfer Windows 10 from HDD to SSD

A thing with Windows 10 is that it works well when installed on an SSD. You will have an overall wonderful experience with Windows 10 if you simply install it in an SSD. So if you decide to upgrade your computer, then you will have to transfer all the Windows 10 content from HDD to SSD.

Steps for Transferring Windows from HDD to SSD

Prerequisites

• Create a backup for your important files.
• Delete all the personal files like music, videos, images from the disk that makes the system partition. You can get them back from backup.
• Perform a defragmentation of your system’s hard drive.
• Make sure that both the hard drive and SSD are connected and recognized by your computer.  

Procedure to Transfer Windows 10 from HDD to SSD

Transferring Windows 10 files from HDD to SSD is all about cloning the drive successfully from your HDD to SSD and to do that effortlessly, the best way is to use software. Here is how to do it:

Using Macrium Reflet

Step 1: Download and install Macrium Reflet 7 on your system.

Step 2: Launch the software. You will see the list of all the available hard drive space and SSD space.  

Step 3: Now select the disk in which the Windows is present. You will see the option below reading “Clone this disk”, click on it.

Step 4: You will see a popup window and it will have the files that will be needed for the cloning. At the bottom of the pop-up window, you will see ‘Select a disk to clone to’, this will your SSD in which you want to install the Windows 10. Do not skip any of the partitions as it might be important for recovery and proper functioning.

Step 5: Click on Next, till you have the ‘Clone Summary’ screen. Check all the details.

Step 6: Click on the ‘Finish’ button and uncheck the second option that asks you to schedule the backup. Just click on ‘OK’.

Now the cloning process will start, and this will take some time depending upon the amount of data you have on your system partition. Just wait for the process to be completed.

Upon successful cloning, restart your system and boot into BIOS (by pressing the ‘delete’ key or the ‘ESC’ key).

From the BIOS go to the Boot menu and you have to change your first boot priority. Make your SSD the first boot priority. Press F10 to save changes. Turn your system off and unplug or remove the HDD in which the Windows was present before cloning.

Now turn your system on again and the Windows will now load from the SSD and that is an indication of a successful transfer.

Using EaseUS Todo Backup

EaseUS Todo Backup is another great software for cloning, and it is very simple and easy to use. The method of cloning will be the same as it is above. So, if you want to use EaseUS Todo, just go ahead with it.  

Deleting Windows 10 from HDD

We have unplugged the HDD from our system, just plug it back on again, and from then format the C: drive, and you will now have a completely new and empty formatted disk. You now have a completely empty disk that you can use to keep a lot of media-related stuff like images, videos, and other stuff.

Read: How to Delete/Format Local Disk C or Windows Partition

Conclusion

That was all about how to transfer Windows 10 from HDD to SSD. As of now, SSDs are still quite expensive, and the affordable ones come in small sizes so the best one can make of it is to just clone the system partition in which the Windows OS resides to the SSD. If you have a big size SSD, you can completely clone the entire HDD contents to your SSD.

Do follow all the steps carefully, make sure to have a backup of all the files and you shall be good to go. Do try the method and let us know in the comments if you face any difficulty.

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