You can use the Windows 10 Download Tool (Or similarly named thing, sorry, I can't find the details of it at this time) to download an ISO image
Combine that with the rufus program https://rufus.ie/ (I use the portable one, personally) to create a Windows 10 USB installer stick. On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 2:39 PM Mark Knecht <markkne...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Michael, > Thanks for the response. Great info. > > The install Win 10 clean sounds wonderful if it works. With no DVD in > this machine it sounds like I should investigate an install from USB if the > machine supports it. It's an Asus gaming laptop circa 2008 so hopefully > that works but I've never done it on this machine. > > Cheers, > Mark > > On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 12:56 PM Michael Jones <gen...@jonesmz.com> wrote: > >> Generally the way I've handled this situation in the past is like so >> (this is written from memory, so expect gratuitous problems). >> >> On the machine with the drive attached >> mbuffer -i /dev/mydrive | xz -e -9 | mbuffer -O hostname:port >> >> On a machine with storage space >> mbuffer -I port -o /path/to/storage.xz >> >> To make a backup. >> >> >> In terms of cloning windows to another harddrive in general, as long as >> the destination harddrive is large enough to fit the original drive without >> issues, simply running: >> >> dd if=/dev/original of=/dev/destination >> (I prefer dcfldd, personally) >> >> Is enough. Run gparted (the graphical version, for nice wizards) after, >> and it'll fixup your partition table for you to match the new size, and you >> can re-size any partitions you have to make them match as well. I do >> exactly this all the time and have yet to have a problem. >> >> As for windows 10 licensing, don't trust me on this blindly, but your >> license should be tied to the hardware fingerprint of the laptop. So even >> installing windows fresh on your new SSD should result in Windows >> activating automatically. In fact, you might want to take this opportunity >> to try that out, to get a completely fresh installation without the decade >> of old cruft built up by window's lack of a package manager. >> >> If it doesn't activate as soon as you plug in an ethernet cable, you can >> just wipe your SSD and copy your old installation as discussed already. >> >> >> >> On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 1:11 PM Mark Knecht <markkne...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> Hi all, >>> I haven't been here in a couple of years. IT's great to see some >>> familiar names posting. Cheers to all. >>> >>> I have a laptop running Win 10 with no (working) DVD/CDROM. For >>> various reasons I want to move from a 10 year old laptop drive to a new SSD >>> and am looking for guidance on I might do that. Win 10 is properly licensed >>> but through a weird channel - it was Win 7 that M$ allowed to convert to >>> Win 10 for free and I'm nervous that if the hard drive died I'd have to >>> purchase a new license as the free conversion path likely doesn't exist >>> anymore. >>> >>> Both drives are nominally 500GB. >>> >>> The older hard drive fdisk info shows: >>> >>> root@science:~# fdisk --list /dev/sde >>> Disk /dev/sde: 465.8 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors >>> Disk model: ASM1053E >>> Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes >>> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes >>> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes >>> Disklabel type: dos >>> Disk identifier: 0xe0c5913d >>> >>> Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type >>> /dev/sde1 63 45062324 45062262 21.5G 1c Hidden W95 FAT32 >>> (LBA) >>> /dev/sde2 * 45062325 288063133 243000809 115.9G 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT >>> /dev/sde3 288063488 289247231 1183744 578M 27 Hidden NTFS >>> WinRE >>> /dev/sde4 289249254 976768064 687518811 327.9G fd Linux raid >>> autodetect >>> root@science:~# >>> >>> The Linux RAID autodetect is from running Gentoo at some earlier time >>> and probably doesn't need to be copied. I'm not at all sure what /dev/sde3 >>> is or whether it's required to make M$ happy. >>> >>> The new SSD is unused and shows: >>> >>> root@science:~# fdisk --list /dev/sdf >>> Disk /dev/sdf: 465.8 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors >>> Disk model: ASM1053E >>> Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes >>> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes >>> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes >>> root@science:~# >>> >>> The appear to have the same sector count and overall size. >>> >>> I can make a 1TB drive available in my big machine and work over USB >>> (which is what I'm doing to get the info above) but I'm unclear how much of >>> this can be done automatically and how much I might need to do by hand. >>> >>> As long as I don't hurt the old drive I can put data on the SSD >>> multiple times to get through the process in case I have trouble. >>> >>> Does anyone have experience with this sort of issue and can you point >>> me toward some instructions I might try? >>> >>> Thanks, >>> Mark >>> >>> >>>
