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Can I Clone Win 10 Currently Residing on SSD to an HDD on Different Computer?

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On my new computer, I currently use ATI2016 to create system images of my Win 10 Pro installation that resides on an SSD. These images are saved to both an internal HDD and to an external USB drive. I have an older computer that is also running Win 10 Pro in dual boot mode with Win 7 Ultimate. ATI2016 is also installed on this older computer.

Since the Win 10 installation on my new computer is more robust and better populated with programs and data, I would like to have it also reside on my old computer in place of what is there. I don't fully understand the differences between cloning and image creation, but I'm wondering if cloning might be a way to go.

Specifically, can I delete the Win 10 installation on my old computer and then install a clone created on my new computer?

Thanks in advance for any help and education...........
 

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Techncially yes.  Once Windows 10 is licensed on a piece of hardware, you can isntall or push an image with the same version of Windows 10 to it too.  You just can't have Win10 Home on one system and try to push an image or use a clone of Windows 10 Pro to the one that was licensed to Windows 10 home as an upgrade from an earlier version of Windows as that hardware is not licensed the different version of Windows 10 and won't activate.

Clone is essentially the same as a system image backup + restore.  I rarely clone because it is more sensitive and leaves no safety net in case you clone the wrong direction, or have differnt sector sizes on the source and destination drive which may make cloning fail.  Also, cloning is more sensitive to bad sectors anyway so is more likely to fail if there are any.  

If you already have a good image you want to use, no need to clone.  I would take one last backup image of the old system (Just in case you plan to reuse the same drive and are about to overwrite it.).  IF you want a sure-fire fail safe, don't push the image to the same drive that your old OS is on.  Pull that drive and hold onto it for posterity.  Then put in a new drive and push the image to it.  If things go south, or you just can't get it to boot, no harm/no foul.  PUt the old drive back in and it's like nothing ever happened. 

Keep in mind:

1) if the new machine is UEFI/GPT and the old one is MBR/Legacy, unless the old system supports UEFI/GPT, your out of luck.  

2) SATA mode in the bios needs to be set the same - if the new system is AHCI, set the old one to AHCI 

3) AFter restoring the image, you may need to run universal restore if you get a BSOD due to driver incompatibility.

4) you can never convert a UEFI image to an MBR image.  YOu should be able to convert an MBR image to a GPT image if desired.  Keeping things the same may give better results.  The way you boot your offline rcovery media will determine the resulting image.  If you boot the USB recovery in legacy mode, you'll get an MBR restored image (which will fail to boot if the image was a UEFI OS to begin with).  If you boot the USB recovery in UEFI mode, you'll get an UEFI restored image (which should boot as long as the system supports UEFI/GPT... I have an old netbook which only knows MBR so there's no chance here in such a case).

Clear as mud?  YOu'll be OK if you take (Or have) backups of both systems ahead of time.  Worse case, you resort back to the old drive or the image you made beforehand. 

 

Bobbo, thank you very much for the quick and detailed response. Unfortunately, I fail your 1) condition above, so I am out of luck. My new computer is UEFI/GPT and the old one is MBR/Legacy (and it does not supports UEFI/GPT).

Oh well, I was just trying to take the lazy man's approach. Thanks again............