Best way to back up/transfer entire Windows install to new laptop?

[krooton]

Having some battery issues with the wife's surface book 3, so will be sending it back for a replacement, however she is pretty annoyed at the thought of having to install everything again from scratch (she has lots of digital art/drawing software and other programs).

I know there are various ways to make a full clone of a drive and windows install, however do they all work when moving things to an entirely new machine that will have a different Win10 serial?

 

[krooton]

The license is tied to the machine's hardware ID...so you *should* just be able to clone across onto the new machine, and provided the new hardware previously had a Windows license tied to it, it'll reactivate no problem.

OK cool, yeah as it will be a replacement unit, it will be the exact same version of Win10 and identical hardware specs.

What would you recommend as the best free cloning software for such an undertaking?

 

[krooton]

Macrium Reflect free.

Arigato!