To clone, or not to clone?

[Kestrel]

I'm going to be putting an SSD in my mom's laptop this weekend... I'm deciding whether I should try to clone the original hard drive or not. On one hand, a fresh Windows 10 install means no bloatware... on the other hand, cloning means no worries about drivers.

Thoughts?

I'm leaning toward a fresh install - but in the event I decide to clone - any good and free software you guys would recommend? In particular, is there any good and free software that will let you clone a larger, but mostly empty drive to a smaller drive that has far more room than necessary for what the large drive holds? The last time I tried cloning, I had no luck - the software demanded a drive of equal or larger size, regardless of how much space was actually taken up on the source drive.

I'm headed to bed, but I'll check out the responses tomorrow - thanks ahead of time.

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[Osprey]

I've always preferred fresh installations. They're like spring cleanings and reset the timer before the system eventually gets bloated and slows down.

There shouldn't be any worry about drivers. Every driver should be available at the laptop manufacturer's website. You can download every one, only ones that Windows didn't automatically detect and install its own basic driver or only ones that come with software that add back features (ex. gesture recognition on the trackpad).

 

[Kestrel]

I've always preferred fresh installations. They're like spring cleanings and reset the timer before the system eventually gets bloated and slows down.

There shouldn't be any worry about drivers. Every driver should be available at the laptop manufacturer's website. You can download every one, only ones that Windows didn't automatically detect and install its own basic driver or only ones that come with software that add back features (ex. gesture recognition on the trackpad).

I mostly don't want to bother finding the right Windows image to download Windows 10 does mean there aren't any particularly good excuses to not do a fresh install... especially with a laptop or prefab when you don't know just how much hidden bloatware there might be. I guess that's my answer!

 

[Kestrel]

Apparently I downloaded the wrong version of W10, because it won't activate. I think I've got the right version downloading now. Also... W10 doesn't recognize most of the devices, including the wireless adaptor... that one surprised me - so this install is more of a PITA than I expected.

 

[Osprey]

Apparently I downloaded the wrong version of W10, because it won't activate. I think I've got the right version downloading now. Also... W10 doesn't recognize most of the devices, including the wireless adaptor... that one surprised me - so this install is more of a PITA than I expected.

If you're trying to activate with a 7 or 8.x key, that may not work any longer. It did for a good year after Windows 10 was released, but I recall reading something about that support ending. If so, you might have to install 7 or 8.x (whichever the key is for) and then upgrade it to Windows 10 (run setup.exe from the ISO from within Windows). After that's done, you can do a reset (Settings->Windows update & recovery->Recovery) to reset Windows to a fresh (or near-fresh) installation state.

As for drivers, just download every driver listed for the laptop model at the manufacturer's website and install them all one after the other. It shouldn't be that much of a pain.

 

[Kestrel]

It's a laptop that came with 10 - I just made the mistake of choosing the "single language" ISO when I prepped the USB drive. This time around, I just chose "Windows 10" instead of "Windows 10 Single Language", and it worked fine - for some reason, it had the majority of the drivers - including the wifi driver - whereas the single language version didn't. That made downloading everything that wasn't already there an awful lot more convenient.

All this was done at like 3 or 4 in the morning - insomnia definitely gives you time to do stuff - but it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to have a well functioning mind to do it

 

[Osprey]

That's weird. I would've never thought that a multi-language ISO would have more drivers than a single-language one. Maybe it has to do with you being in Canada. Well, I'm still not sure why that would explain it, but it might be something that we in the States don't have an issue with (at least I hope not).

 

[Kestrel]

It could have even been just a weird one-off, I don't know... either way, the computer is up and running, and much faster now that it's on an SSD.