Updating old System to new System using NVMe SDD
Help, I have two computer systems, an old (windows 10 ver 1803) and a brand new blank system. The old system has a standard harddrive 500GB and is not UEFI mode. The OS is on an 80GB partition, the remaining 385GB is just misc data about 35GB used. I made two backups of just the 80GB OS partitions and one of the entire 500GB drive with all the partitions.
My new computer system has a 250GB NVMe SSD. When I try to restore the OS using the Rescue media on the new computer both in UEFI and normal mode, I can add the NVMe drive and initialize it in either MBR or GPT mode, but anytime I select the destination drive during the recovery the NVMe is always listed, but ghosted out and not selectable. I tried multiple partition modes and boots, but the NVMe is not assignable. I am guessing because the source is MBR and the target is GPT (even tho I did try and add the NMVe as a MBR partition).
I finally gave up and did a fresh install of Window 10 on the new computer. I did a quick backup of my fresh install. I used the same Rescue media USB and walked through the restore process using UEFI mode and now the NMVe showed up as available to be selected. I then reboot again using Rescue media USB with the original backup files from my old system and the NVMe was again not available. So there seems to be a mismatch.
I then the booted the freshly installed Windows 10 and installed ATI. I added both original backups, but when I can select the partitions that I want to restore, and then selected the NVMe partition I get an error located at the bottom that I cannot recover the selected partition. See image.
I just can seem to get my original OS on the new computer. What can I do?


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Joe, welcome to these public User Forums.
Having just invested in a new HP Omen i7 laptop to replace my own ancient Dell 1545 laptop, both running Windows 10 64-bit. I can strongly recommend making a fresh start on the new hardware rather than porting the old OS from the older system, especially given that the old system was Legacy / MBR and your new system has to use UEFI / GPT due to having an NVMe M.2 SSD, which will also very likely be using Intel RST for RAID support.
My new HP Omen laptop is a world apart from the old Dell and a real joy to use after being used to long boot times, slow performance etc!
Installing my key applications on the HP didn't take very long, especially when using a tool like Ninite to pick from a list of popular applications and install them from a single program!
Migrating data took a little longer but has allowed me to do some long needed housekeeping and cull things that I had not used in a long time. I used a 2TB Seagate Barracuda USB 3.1 external drive for the data migration along with using the same to make disk backups with ATI along the way, including one prior to the first boot of the HP laptop (using the rescue media).
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Thanks, I did boot several time with the recovery media in UEFI mode and had no problems accessing my M.2 drive. But during the recovery step after I selected source and when trying to select destination, I could see my M.2 drive partitions listed, but it was always ghosted out and I was not able to select it...
I do agree that I probably need to do the fresh start and appreciate the hint on the tool Ninite. Will this tool port over your Windows key?
Thanks,
Joe
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Joe, no to the question about Ninite porting your Windows key! Did you new computer come pre-installed with Windows 10, if so then it should have no issues activating with its own license?
My new HP Omen laptop came with Windows 10 Home 64-bit so I had no need to worry about keys etc.
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No I built them myself, I was just upgrading the motherboard (supporting M.2), processor and memory and was planning to reuse the old windows key. I guess I can get another OEM key online...
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