New computer old drives, easiest OS move?

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sfsuphysics

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So finally decided to make the upgrade push from a 4690k to a amd 7700x, and pretty much everything is new except I'd like to use the old drives, an older sata ssd as a boot drive, a relatively new NVME and a pile of spinning rust where my downloads go and a plex server. I already know I'm going to be in a shit storm because all the hardware is new so Windows (win10pro) is going to object.

But I'm wondering what's the easiest/best way to go about doing things? I'd love to do a fresh install, but I really would not love to have to reinstall every damn thing I have too because registry this or that. Any advice?
 
Using the old SATA SSD for boot and relegating a brand-new NVMe unit to handling downloads, media, and other relatively static files? That is exactly backwards.

OS/apps on the NVMe SSD, media files on HDDs, and if you still want to utilize the SATA SSD sure use that for downloads and other transient files.

Suck it up and fresh install Win11 (or 10 I guess) onto the NVMe drive.
 
windows 10 wont care. it will say setting up new hardware, reboot a couple times and be at the desktop in a few minutes. it adapts to hardware changes stupidly good. just set you ssd as the boot drive in bios and it should be good to go. once at the desktop remove old drivers and install the new ones. as far a reactivating windows, just tell it you changed hardware and the licence should transfer fine(if its retail). if youre using a ms account you can transfer it in your online account settings.
 
BlueLineSwinger said:
Using the old SATA SSD for boot and relegating a brand-new NVMe unit to handling downloads, media, and other relatively static files? That is exactly backwards.
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You misread what I said, spinning rust (aka HDD) is downloads, media, etc. the NVMe is where all my games go, the sata ssd is basically because well that's what I originally had and it works fine enough for what it is (at the time sata ssds were significantly cheaper than nvme ones).

pendragon1 said:
windows 10 wont care. it will say setting up new hardware, reboot a couple times and be at the desktop in a few minutes. it adapts to hardware changes stupidly good. just set you ssd as the boot drive in bios and it should be good to go. once at the desktop remove old drivers and install the new ones. as far a reactivating windows, just tell it you changed hardware and the licence should transfer fine(if its retail). if youre using a ms account you can transfer it in your online account settings.
Click to expand...
Sweet, didn't know it was that simple.
 
pendragon1 said:
windows 10 wont care. it will say setting up new hardware, reboot a couple times and be at the desktop in a few minutes. it adapts to hardware changes stupidly good. just set you ssd as the boot drive in bios and it should be good to go. once at the desktop remove old drivers and install the new ones. as far a reactivating windows, just tell it you changed hardware and the licence should transfer fine(if its retail). if youre using a ms account you can transfer it in your online account settings.
Click to expand...
It depends on if windows was originally installed with UEFI or not.
What I would do is migrate the current OS to the NVME drive using an NVME external enclosure, which are as low as $10.
Put the NVME into the new machine and see if it can boot, if it doesn't, there are steps you can take to try and get it to boot by creating a UEFI boot partition on the drive using the console.

A few years ago when I was building my friend his new 3900X setup to replace his i7 4770, I migrated his OS to an SSD, then migrated that to an NVME.
His 3900X setup wouldn't boot with the NVME or SSD, just blue screened, so out of curiosity I slapped his SSD into my 4790K machine and it booted up, I then migrated that OS to the NVME and put it into his 3900X and it booted up.
 
Zepher said:
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What I would do is migrate the current OS to the NVME drive using an NVME external enclosure, which are as low as $10.
.
Click to expand...

But why?

Why buy an enclosure for this. One just slap a new copy on the nvme. Are we really that invested in an OS to have to transfer it. But even if you are why exta money on an enclosure that is superfluous to the process
 
pendragon1 said:
licence should transfer fine
Click to expand...

I have the best luck if I change to login with microsoft account on the old machine first, then use the new machine with the microsoft account and do several reboots before switching back to a local account. Activation should whine at some point, and tell it you switched hardware and pick the name of the computer. If you run a ms account normally, that's easier cause you don't need to do anything.

Sometimes the activation server doesn't want to work right away, just try again the next day.
 
kydsid said:
But why?

Why buy an enclosure for this. One just slap a new copy on the nvme. Are we really that invested in an OS to have to transfer it. But even if you are why exta money on an enclosure that is superfluous to the process
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Depends on how you value your time I would guess. $10 to migrate direct to the NVME and be up and running in 20 minutes or so, or spend hours, maybe even half a day installing and updating and configuring all your apps.
My friend didn't want to have to do a clean install since his time is valuable so $10 for the enclosure and paying me to make it all work was worth it for him.
His machine has been running flawlessly for nearly 4 years now.
 
Cloning your os ssd to your nvme could work very fine, lot of people did it more than one time,
 
LukeTbk said:
Cloning your os ssd to your nvme could work very fine, lot of people did it more than one time,
Click to expand...

Cloning to a new drive for use in the same system usually works fine. It's the moving to a new system with an existing Windows install, as the OP wants to do, where things tend to get messy if not absolutely ugly.
 
BlueLineSwinger said:
Cloning to a new drive for use in the same system usually works fine. It's the moving to a new system with an existing Windows install, as the OP wants to do, where things tend to get messy if not absolutely ugly.
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Well I'd be happy to just install new if I could find every save game file of every game my kid plays, that's where the problems lie, because he'd flip his shit if I just shut down the old computer while losing his progress in any game he plays I'd have to deal with cranky child, as it is when I couldn't remember the password to his kindle tablet and had to do a hard reset he got super pissed that his Minecraft data was all gone.

The alternative I guess is to leave the old computer as is, and get some sort of usb switch so I could just go back and forth with one keyboard/mouse setup for 2 computers.
 
Just clone the SSD to the new nVME and try booting from it. This way you still have the old drive to go back to.

I moved from a 2600k to 3900X this way and after a few boots was fine like others said. Win 10 Pro.
 
Was that just a copy/paste from a site like wikihow? :D Appreciate the feedback though.

After seeing how cheap SSDs got, 1TB entry level sticks for ~$40, $60 for mid/high level (i.e. dram & TBW that would realistically outlive the card) I think I'll just roll with a new install and have an unactivated copy of windows until I can get an .edu discount or something. Then a cheap KM switch and the old system can stay a Plex server and kid can play his minecraft/lego games.
 
BlueLineSwinger said:
Something like that. Note the unrelated spam link they inserted into the quote.

I reported it, others should as well.
Click to expand...
Good catch didn't even realize that was there, and here I thought it was just someone being helpful... although only 1 post kind is fishy and makes a whole lot of bot sense.
 
I've cloned my OS drive to a new drive and just installed, it's worked the last 2 migrations I've done, the most recent being my 7800x3d build
 
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