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New laptop, as is or old SSD?

cj66

cj66

pfm Member
I have just acquired a spanking new Lenovo lappy. Spec., as pertaining to this post, is Win10 Home and 1TB HDD ( sata3 ).
Sooooooo, before heading into set up and all things Win10 (New to me) would I be better off swapping in the SSD from my old Dell lappy (complete with Win7ult. and all my progs 'n' stuff that live there in), hopefully getting the right drivers from Lenovo to keep the newer hardware and old OS friendly.

Reason for new lappy was the ancient Dell Mobo finally gave up, powering down the screen, screen confirmed ok and controller renewed. Plus it was pretty shagged generally, with over 10 years of service I think i got my monies worth!
 
You can try it, but there could be problems with drivers - as you've hinted at. I'd certainly keep the Lenovo hard drive somewhere safe in case you need to put it back in.
 
I would rescue the SSD out of the old Dell as it is still usable, but also get a new 1TB SSD (so you have the same capacity) and clone the Lenovo HDD. You would need a USB 3 to SATA adapter (under £10) and a free disk cloning program like Macrium Reflect to copy the HDD. Then keep the Lenovo HDD safe somewhere in case of disasters
 
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Did you machine come with restore disks? (Thats what HP call em) DVD`s that contain windows and maybe a driver disk to restore the machine back to factory install
If not, you should be able to make restore disks from inside windows 10

Some laptops have the M2 slot and HDD crossing each other at 90degrees making you choose one or the other

Its doubtfull you will be able to drop the win7 drive in and get it going on the Lenovo without a tin opener/worms BUT, take a backup or two of its contents before dropping it in.
I have had luck moving win7 boot drives to other machines in the past so you never know!

M2 YES!
Samsung 970EVO or something like that, CRIPES! they are quick, recently bunged one into my X99 motherboard.

Using the Lenovo restore disks you either got in the box or created
Take the HDD out, put the SSD in, then use the disks to reinstall. Go into the BIOS settings, set the boot disk as the SSD, then put the HDD back in
 
Thanks for the comments so far. It looks like only one driver available for Win7u but word on the street is that the W10 drivers should be fine.
Good shout on making the recovery discs first!
 
cjarchez said:
Thanks for the comments so far. It looks like only one driver available for Win7u but word on the street is that the W10 drivers should be fine.
Good shout on making the recovery discs first!
Click to expand...

And back everything up on the old laptop. Assume worst case.
Any laptop is great once you add an SSD, even the bottom(ish) of the range, transformed with an ssd.
 
You can't simply drop a Windows disk from one computer to another without some preparation. First the dependant drivers need to be removed from the existing installation and also the SIDs. Microsoft provides a tool to do this and its called 'sysprep'. Once the disk has been syspreped it can be installed in a different computer and it will go through the re-install process but will retain all your old accounts/data and all installed programs/applications. You may have to re-activate Windows using your old key. Before you do this perform an image backup of the Windows installation and read up on how to perform the sysprep on the web.

I have also discovered a simpler way to move a whole Windows installation but you need a spare disk/SSD and a SATA to USB cable (<£6). For someone on another thread I actually moved a Windows 10 Pro installation complete with user accounts and installed applications to one of my Mac Minis (an old 2010 model) to prove that it could be done. Works a treat and the original Windows disk and complete installation is still running in the old computer. I should add that Win 10 lets you use an unactivated copy but withholds some prettification.

Usually the Windows key supplied with your computer hasn't been used rather the OEM installed a generic version which has their own inbuilt key. Therefore your old key should activate the new installation.

Cheers,

DV
 
After checking things out and for many reasons, I've decided to go down the clone to new SSD route
Therefore, I'm making sure all is set up the way I want and clean of junk etc.
Order up a decent size SSD and clone over to that.
So sort of a mash up of most of the advice above.
Cheers folks.
 
Definitely worth a go after backed up.
Just for the giggles, I have a 2.5" HDD that originally came from a HP USDT machine(Little PC that attaches to the back of a monitor)
It has Win 7 pro, it wasnt used, just swapped out for an SSD, I used it in a HP core i3 laptop (now has an SSD) for last 6 months.
I just bunged it into an old Acer laptop with an AMD Turion X2 and 4GB RAM.
After a little while I was presented with my login screen, logged in and left it to figure itself out for 5 mins. It installed quite a few drivers
and then wanted to reboot, its now working a treat! All drivers loaded and functional.
Amazing! was set up for an Intel CPU with DDR3 ram and now an AMD with DDR2 ram without so much as a blue screen of death!
 
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