Transplanting an SSD with Win10 in another computer

[johnrobert]

What are the pro and con transplanting an SSD with Win10 in another computer, in the old days doing this you would get a blue screen unless chipset was the same, Win 10 does not do this it would save a ton of work in reconfiguring other than a few app needing to be activated.
I have done it a few times and it has always worked

 

[glricht]

I don't know what the "official" stand is on this, but I've done it a number of times and it has worked perfectly for me.

 

[Markverhyden]

Officially it depends on the type of license that accompanies the OS.

OEM - lives and dies on the chassis it came with. But I don't have problem moving the drive to another chassis of the same OEM as long as it came with the same version. Except for servers virtually all OEM computers already come with a MS OS license.

Retail - as in buying an individual license. It can be moved to another chassis that belongs to the owner.

VLK - what ever the license holder wants to do more or less.

Resale - If I remember correctly an individual may sell a computer with the software it came with. But the license follows the chassis. If someone is reselling used computers they must purchase Refurb licenses even if they are OEM machines.

 

[Metanis]

I've done this a number of times. But if Windows was flaky on the old chassis it will likely give you problems on the new. Mostly though I've just had it work and then I'd run all updates including hardware via DriverBooster.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I always preferred a clean install. Also I'm not a fan of working around...OEM licensing rules.

I've seen many techs who did this over the years, way way back in the DOS and Win3x days it worked fine. With Windows 95...it started to get flakey, esp if the motherboard model was different (not to mention the CPU, and other devices like video, sound, various chipset components). You could tell the real amateur tech jobs....the desktop would be half safe mode looking, "standard VGA video adapter"...lol. Some techs would know to install other drivers like video, sound. But if you looked at Device Mangler, you'd see a mess of other unknown devices, and yellow exclamation marks. And some more thorough techs would clean that up more.

As operating systems evolved...Windows got a little more "tolerant" of this. Yeah going from Intel to AMD or visa versa wasn't always a success. And/or the hard drive bus type would be another key.

However, I have noticed...computers that have had this approach done, are more likely to be the ones that have odd quirks....like, power management doesn't work properly, or...for those who are into gaming with intensive graphics, those are the computers that are more prone to "CTD" out of the game (crash to desktop).

 

[Rosco]

What are the pro and con transplanting an SSD with Win10 in another computer, in the old days doing this you would get a blue screen unless chipset was the same, Win 10 does not do this it would save a ton of work in reconfiguring other than a few app needing to be activated.
I have done it a few times and it has always worked

It works fine if needed. Usually I do it when a client has legacy software that won't be easy to find.

 

[nlinecomputers]

I've done this a number of times. But if Windows was flaky on the old chassis it will likely give you problems on the new. Mostly though I've just had it work and then I'd run all updates including hardware via DriverBooster.

DriverBooster? I'm not sure that I trust anything from IOBit. Maybe that's irrational but I've never had a good feeling about them.

 

[John Kennedy]

Moving a drive directly from a previously-functional machine to a new machine and using it as a boot drive is possible, but many others have already explained some of the potential problems. Licensing, drivers, partially-corrupted Windows install you didn't know about, etc are all problems you don't have if you do a fresh install.

However, I've certainly done it before with Windows 10 without too many problems, like when I upgraded my motherboard and CPU in my main desktop. Something that tends to work a bit better is performing a full image, bare-metal-style backup of the WIndows install and then restoring it to the new drive. It's meant more for such situations where you know some of the drivers may not play nice.

 

[GTP]

DriverBooster.

No way in hell.

 

[cypress]

Done a couple times and haven't had any issues but I always prefer a clean install if it all possible.

 

[britechguy]

like when I upgraded my motherboard and CPU in my main desktop.

The thought occurred to me that doing this sort of transplant, at least for the same hardware, is pretty much akin to doing a motherboard replacement.

I've kept this Microsoft Support page, Reactivating Windows after a hardware change, bookmarked for just those occasions.