Michael, I got Win 10 Pro installed via the M$ tool that creates USB install devices. It worked fine. Reading online it seems that if M$ sees the new disk as still the same 'hardware' then it's supposed to automatically validate and I'd be good to go. so far, after 2 hours it hasn't done that but I'll give it awhile and see what happens. As it only took an hour I might still try the disk copy path and see if that comes up validated as that would also transfer the couple of applications I have on the original hard drive.
Anyway, thanks for the ideas. Cheers, Mark On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 3:01 PM Michael Jones <gen...@jonesmz.com> wrote: > 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 >>>> >>>> >>>>
