How to Move Windows 10 from HDD to M.2 SSD without Reinstalling

By Achilles Hill | Last Updated January 03, 2024

"Can I install Windows 10 from my HDD to the M.2 SSD without losing all my data? I just bought an M.2 NVMe SSD to speed up my games so I was wondering if I can clone Windows 10 to NVMe SSD without being deactivated."

When the HDD is running slower and slower, it will take more time to start your computer or open files and programs on your PC. In this situation, you may consider upgrading HDD to M.2 SSD in order to get a faster reading speed and better computer performance. However, it would be very troublesome if you reinstall all the programs and applications in the new SSD. So it is a great way to migrate your operating system (OS) to an M.2 SSD. Here you'll learn How to Move Windows 10 from HDD to M.2 SSD without Reinstalling.

move win 10 from hdd to m.2 ssd

Why Move Windows 10 from HDD to M.2 SSD

Compared with HDD, SSD has the following advantages:

1. Faster read-write speed. Compared with an HDD, the read-write speed of SSD is 3-5 times as fast as the read-write speed of an ordinary HDD.

2. Better anti-vibration capability. SSD has strong anti-vibration ability. So even if it is used in motion or vibration, it is not easy to damage the hard disk, which is opposite with HDD.

3. Lower dissipation. SSD has lower power consumption and possesses an extremely low power standby function while HDD doesn't have.

4. No noise. There is almost no noise that can be heard of during the operation of SSD. But you can hear the sound of internal disk rotation and vibration of HDD.

5. Less fever. SSD produces less heat. Even after running for a period of time, you won't feel heat obviously by touching its surface.

How to Move Windows 10 from HDD to M.2 SSD

The easiest way to move Windows 10 from HDD to M.2 SSD (SATA/NVMe) is to use a professional third party tool to help you. Here we strongly recommend iSunshare CloneGo to you. It is a reliable and professional Windows system and partition clone software which can be used to copy Windows operation system to SSD/HDD securely and effectively without reinstallation. In addition, it can also backup and restore system or partitions and even clone the entire hard disk to another disk directly without data loss. Here is the guidance to transfer Windows 10 from HDD to SSD with iSunshare CloneGo.

Step 1: First of all, please make sure that you have the M.2 SSD connected and installed properly on your computer. Then, open your computer, go to the Disk Management to initialize the disk, and then add volumes to the initialized M.2 SSD so as to allocate it.

initialize the ssd firstly

Step 2: Download and install iSunshare CloneGo on your computer. Then launch it and select the feature of "Copy" on the left panel.

select the function of copy

Step 3: Go to the option of Select a Source Partition, click the inverted triangle and then you will see a list of drive letters in the drop-down menu. Then choose the partition where the Windows system is installed (it's usually the local disk C) as the source partition.

select a source partition

Step 4: Similarly, click the inverted triangle under the option of Select a Target Partition and choose the partition of your M.2 SSD as the target partition. Considering that CloneGo will format the selected target partition, you'd better backup the partition data in advance in case of data loss.

select a target partition

Tip 1: If the source partition is the system C partition, the box next to the option of Set the target partition as the boot disk is suggested to be ticked to make the target partition bootable. If you uncheck this option, the destination target will not be set as the boot disk to launch the Windows OS. But if the source target is not system C partition, you can dismiss this notice.

set the target partition as the boot disk

Tip 2: You can check the box next to the option of After Finished and decide your computer to shutdown, restart or hibernate after the copy possess is completed. Or you can ignore it if you don't want it to do so.

set your pc to shutdown

Step 5: Click the button of Start at the right bottom of the interface to continue. And then a small window will pop up to ask for your confirmation, click Yes to go ahead. Then the copy process will start.

Step 6: Once the process is completed, a message will pop up and say the copy is completed successfully. You can click OK to close it. At that time, the Windows OS from the old HDD will be moved to the new M.2 SSD successfully. Then you can boot the computer from the M.2 SSD in the boot menu or the computer setup program (BIOS/UEFI) to run the copied system.

the copy process is finished