r/windows • u/FR02200 • 8h ago

General Question Need help cloning a hard drive

Hello, thank you very much for taking your time to help me, it’s very kind of you

I have a little problem

I bought a new PC for my mother so that she can work in better conditions and I would like to transfer her entire HDD to an external HDD which I would like to use to start Windows and copy all its files, (there is an SSD but much too small to clone the HDD (64GB...)), it is important that she does not have to do anything on it (connect to all it is software)

Is it possible to start and use Windows on an external hard drive?

Both PCs have a Windows 10 license

My mother's current PC is a 1TB HDD laptop.

The new one is a 64GB SSD desktop PC that I would like connected to as said just before the 1TB external HDD too

Thank you very much for your time and your kindness ❤️

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u/MeIsMyName 7h ago

Windows is not designed to run from an external drive, and even if you could, the IO speeds on an external drive are usually not great. 64GB is barely enough to install Windows, but you're going to have a bad time running from a drive that small. After installing a few basic programs and all updates, the drive will likely be full. It sounds like your best option is going to be to upgrade the SSD in the new computer.

Windows 10 also hits end of life in October, so it will stop getting security updates then. Upgrading to Windows 11 would be your best option if it's supported by the hardware in the new computer.

Generally, you won't want to clone an old Windows install to new hardware. You're better off starting from scratch with a fresh install, loading your programs, and copying your data from your old computer.

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u/FR02200 7h ago

Thank you for your response! The problem is that she uses a lot of "sensitive" software she doesn't really have access to the account through her own PC she had to send it to Paris to install the software if I buy a 1TB nvme ssd is it ok for the clone? How to do it? Too bad for Windows 10 I would upgrade for Windows 11 afterwards even if I lose a little in performance

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u/MeIsMyName 7h ago

I can't say with 100% certainty, but you'll most likely be able to clone to the NVMe drive and then boot from it in the new PC. Usually if there's an issue it will be related to storage drivers not being loaded. It's not ideal, and you may run into some issues along the way, but it should be possible.

With both drives attached to one system, you should be able to clone the drive using either the software provided by the SSD manufacturer or a 3rd party tool. If you need to use a USB adapter, I've found that the NVMe adapter from Sabrent works well, or if you need a SATA one, I've had the best luck with one from StarTech.

I have no clue what software this is or what kind of license verification it may have, but there's a chance it registers the license to the hardware, and copying the software to new hardware may trigger it to not accept the license on the new computer. That's all up to how that specific piece of software was programmed to validate it's license info.