How would I "move" over to an NVME boot drive without messing everything up?

[beany_bot]

Hi.
At the moment I have everything (windows, office and games on a 1TB SSD).

If I were to get a new mobo, CPU and NVME boot drive (say 250GB). How would I get windows and a few select programs onto it?

Any time in the past I have tried to clone drives or do such things it has ended in disaster.

Simply put. New mobo CPU and NVME drive. How do I get windows, office and GIMP on it while leaving everything else (including steam and games) on the SSD?

 

[LuckyBenski]

How would I get windows and a few select programs onto it?

Reinstall from scratch if you only want a subset of apps.

Any time in the past I have tried to clone drives or do such things it has ended in disaster.

Definitely reinstall from scratch.

New mobo CPU and NVME drive

You really want to be installing from scratch.

If you really want to keep your license, you could detach it from your installation and reuse it. There are guides online as it takes a few steps. Alternatively grab a cheap key online (~£5) and your old mobo will retain the old key for whoever uses it next.

 

[LuckyBenski]

To add to that, cloning doesn't work if there is more data on the source than the destination's capacity.

Plus trying to clone, but leave games and software installed is never going to work. All these are problems that are correctly solved by installing from scratch.

You could back up your steamapps folder and point your Steam portal at it to save downloading your games again, but it will still need to configure itself.

 

[beany_bot]

Thanks all. That makes it easier I guess. Most if not all y stuff is stored in the cloud now anyway so thats fine. I've learned tha windows licences are tied to mobos now too which is good. I always wondered.

 

[LuckyBenski]

Thanks all. That makes it easier I guess. Most if not all y stuff is stored in the cloud now anyway so thats fine. I've learned tha windows licences are tied to mobos now too which is good. I always wondered.

One of those things that you might get away with but can catch you out at the worst time

 

[stockhausen]

...
If I were to get a new mobo, CPU and NVME boot drive (say 250GB). How would I get windows and a few select programs onto it?
...

... I've learned that windows licences are tied to mobos now too which is good. ...

I definitely can't claim to understand how Microsoft enforce their OS licensing policy but I would have thought that one couldn't use the same key on different motherboards.

Also, I don't understand why you say that that is good for you?

 

[beany_bot]

I definitely can't claim to understand how Microsoft enforce their OS licensing policy but I would have thought that one couldn't use the same key on different motherboards.

Also, I don't understand why you say that that is good for you?

Its good to learn stuff?

 

[LuckyBenski]

And it's good to know this before attempting to migrate an install to a new motherboard...

TBF I think Windows 10 is a little more flexible about reconfiguring for new hardware. There's a process you can do before changing things.