Windows 10 upgrade and SSD

Currently I have a laptop running Windows 7 on a HDD but I want to upgrade to Windows 10 on an SSD.
Does anyone know if it is better to upgrade to 10 first and then migrate to SSD or to do the migration before the upgrade?

Thanks in advance.

Rich M

Posted 2016-03-02T11:34:23.333

Reputation: 356

Answers

Does anyone know if it is better to upgrade to 10 first and then migrate to SSD or to do the migration before the upgrade?

Both ways have their advantage.

Directly installing win10 on the SSD means:

No leftover crud from an old win7 install
Still got your old harddisk around in case things do not work out. (e.g. if win10 does not recognise your network card out of the box and you need to download drivers.... Whoops. Catch 22....

First upgrading win7 to win 10 means:

'Licence' activation.
and in my experience it just works, while direclty installing windows 10 was a hassle of failing to install, unclear error messages and driver problems.

Hennes

Posted 2016-03-02T11:34:23.333

Reputation: 60 739

Not sure if it works this way if he has only OEM license. Does Win10 recognize the OEM license on a fresh install? – TJJ – 2016-03-02T15:03:02.820

Good question. What I have done myself is: 1) Good backup of win7 2) Upgrade to 10. 3) replaced disk with a shiny new PCIe SSD and did a clean install on that. No key was entered but the same-ish hardware was recognised and auto activated. – Hennes – 2016-03-03T12:17:23.233

Yes. This should work. However, without upgrading from Win7 first, I don't know if Win10 would detect the BIOS-embedded licensing-information for the free upgrade. – TJJ – 2016-03-03T15:54:28.983

-1

There are some disadvantages in doing the 7->10-Upgrade from the SSD, but they are negligible:

Unnecessarily writing of rather large amounts of data to the SSD (but it's only one time, so it doesn't really have an impact on wear but cosmetic)
The Win 10 install might not be as clean after the upgrade than if you directly do a fresh install

Those are the only things I can think of. Anyway, I did it the same way: old HDD with Win7, upgrade to 10, replace HDD by SSD, then fresh install of Win10 (activates automatic).

TJJ

Posted 2016-03-02T11:34:23.333

Reputation: 470

Why the downvote? – TJJ – 2016-03-02T15:02:11.947

Not my downvote, but I suspect it is due to the no longer true warning about writing data to a SSD. This has not been a problem for ages. – Hennes – 2016-03-02T15:17:34.227

Well, while it IS a problem of flash media, it has become so small that even the over-average user will not be suffering from a decline. That's what I pointed out. – TJJ – 2016-03-03T12:05:43.807

True. Is can be a problem. But not for an average user and not for most power users. And the last drive I looked at supported full drive size writes per day for years. You can exceed it, but that takes some rare circumstances. – Hennes – 2016-03-03T12:21:28.777

Or the downvote here either! – Rich M – 2016-03-04T15:53:27.427

-1

I would suggest migrating then updating as I have personal experience of issues with W10 and W7 licenses.

Once you upgrade to W10 you will lose your W7 license so write it down before you upgrade. The license gets turned into a W10 license which cannot be reversed.

Also doing it this way you will know if it's the SSD or the upgrade that caused any issues you may then find you have with your system.

David Golding

Posted 2016-03-02T11:34:23.333

Reputation: 339

The W7 licence in an OEM one. – Rich M – 2016-03-02T12:51:58.070

would also love to know the reason behind my -1.....? – David Golding – 2016-03-04T13:21:19.870

I didn't do this! – Rich M – 2016-03-04T15:53:13.067