New Hard Drive Questions

[kylesgranma]

I have had windows 10 since last November and now my hard drive needs to be replaced. How do I transfer windows 10 from the old drive to the new one and where do I find it? Also with my new drive will I need new drivers and how do I go about that? I had windows 10 home addition 64 bit

 

[Tim Locke]

Unless the machine is old you probably won't need new drivers. ( that would be so old that you are not running W10!)

The easy way if the old disk is still just about working and the PC is a desktop. Download the free software from Paragon for disk cloning. Plug the new disk into a spare SATA port and clone it. Then unplug the old disk and plug in the new one into SATA port 0 i.e the port the old disk is in. reboot. Check that everything is working.

You can still do this if it is a laptop but if the new disk is an HDD then you'll need to buy beg or borrow a powered SATA to USB enclosure. They are cheap and often come in useful later. If the new disk is an SSD the maker will usually provide a USB to SATA connector that can power a SSD

If your new disk is an SSD you may have to fiddle back up data separately and partition the old disk as it is likely to be smaller than the old disk. IIRC the Paragon software will advise. Again more complicated on a laptop.

The above is just the basic procedures. Backing everything up first. Asking for advice when you choose the new disk is good.

 

[kylesgranma]

Unless the machine is old you probably won't need new drivers. ( that would be so old that you are not running W10!)

The easy way if the old disk is still just about working and the PC is a desktop. Download the free software from Paragon for disk cloning. Plug the new disk into a spare SATA port and clone it. Then unplug the old disk and plug in the new one into SATA port 0 i.e the port the old disk is in. reboot. Check that everything is working.

You can still do this if it is a laptop but if the new disk is an HDD then you'll need to buy beg or borrow a powered SATA to USB enclosure. They are cheap and often come in useful later. If the new disk is an SSD the maker will usually provide a USB to SATA connector that can power a SSD

If your new disk is an SSD you may have to fiddle back up data separately and partition the old disk as it is likely to be smaller than the old disk. IIRC the Paragon software will advise. Again more complicated on a laptop.

The above is just the basic procedures. Backing everything up first. Asking for advice when you choose the new disk is good.

Mine is a desk top, but I don't think it will let me clone anything. I keep getting error that boot disk is not found and it shuts down if I try to move a large file, or if it works on something for a long time. Is there any way to get a clean install from Microsoft?

 

[Tim Locke]

You can download the ISO and write it to a DVD or a USB drive and then boot from that onto a new disk. Do you have original recovery disks for your PC? If you have them/it it might be easier to boot from those first as they will have the chipset drivers. Even an original W7 or W8 disk from the PC manufacturer would get you on the air. Your machine is of course registered with MS for W10 so you can reload W10 any time.

 

[kylesgranma]

You can download the ISO and write it to a DVD or a USB drive and then boot from that onto a new disk. Do you have original recovery disks for your PC? If you have them/it it might be easier to boot from those first as they will have the chipset drivers. Even an original W7 or W8 disk from the PC manufacturer would get you on the air. Your machine is of course registered with MS for W10 so you can reload W10 any time.

My grandson replaced my hard drive and downloaded windows 10 for me. This version looks a little different than the original one I had,and has different options. Maybe it was an update or something else. But it works and I do thank all who responded to my questions.You are very generous with your help.

 

[Tim Locke]

I expect you have the new anniversary update. Grandchildren are good for problems like that!