[Tutorials]: How to Copy Windows 10 From One Computer to Another?

Reasons to copy Windows 10 from one PC to another

How to copy Windows 10 from one hard drive to another? How to install Windows 10 from one PC to another? When you are going to replace your old computer with a new computer, these two questions are often mentioned because many users change computers due to the old computers are getting slower and slower. But the users are very satisfied with the old computer's operating system, and there are also programs and files that are important to him. So they hope to transfer the operating system from one computer to another to keep the system settings, programs, and data exactly the same as the old PC. In this way, there is no need to reinstall the Windows, which is time-consuming.

How to copy Windows 10 from one computer to another step by step?

If you are having such trouble, then you come to the right place. Because there is a very powerful third-party tool that can clone Windows 10 to another PC, AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional (highly recommend for Windows 11/10/8/7/Vista/XP users), this is one of the best cloning software on the market.

It supports Disk Clone and Migrate OS to SSD. If you want to clone the Windows 10 and other data from old PC to new PC, then please choose Disk Clone; if you only need to migrate Windows 10 to new computer, Migrate OS to SSD is your first choice.

With a concise interface, you can efficiently and quickly to achieve your goal. Now, let me show you how to copy Windows 10 from one computer to another.

PS.: Please don’t hesitate after watching this example, download demo version for a free trial!

Before the operation, you need to disassemble your new computer, take out the hard drive, plug it into your old computer.

 Step 1. Install AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional and open it. In the operation bar on the top, in “Clone”, select “Clone Disk”.

Step 2. If you want to clone Windows 10 to a smaller SSD, then you can choose Clone Disk Quickly. But if you want to clone Windows 10 to a large drive, you can choose Sector-By-Sector Clone(choose the first method as an example). 

Clone Disk Quickly: refers to fast cloning of used sectors to the target disk or partition, allowing the capacity of the target disk to be smaller than the capacity of the original disk.
Sector-by-Sector Clone: refers to clone all sectors of the original disk to the new disk, so the capacity of the new disk is required to be equal to or greater than the original disk.

Step 3. Select the disk where the operating system is located here (take Disk 1 as an example).

Step 4. Here, choose the hard drive of the new computer (take Disk 2 as an example). If your target drive is an SSD, you can check “Optimize the performance of SSD”. The purpose of this is to improve the SSD read and write speed.

Step 5. In this step, you can adjust the size of the target disk partition. If it is cloned to a smaller hard drive, you cannot select the first item.

Step 6. You can preview all operations this time in this window. Click “Apply” to submit for execution.

How to boot after copying Windows 10 to another PC

After cloning Windows 10 to the another hard drive, install it back into the computer.

1. Keep pressing F2, F3, F4, F5, ESC or other keys to enter the BIOS menu when the computer starts.

2. In the BIOS menu, enter “BIOS” setup.

3. To give the new hard drive boot sequence priority, you can move it to the top of the boot sequence list.

4. Save and exit the BIOS setup utility.

5. Restart the computer and enter the license key to activate Windows 10.

What should you do if it does not start?

If you clone Windows 10 to MBR hard disk, you must change the boot mode to Legacy/CSM. Otherwise, the computer will not be able to boot from the drive. If it is cloned to GPT hard disk, the motherboard must not only support EFI/UEFI, but it must also be set to EFI/UEFI boot mode. Please see How to Change Boot Mode in BIOS for more information.

If the operating system is cloned to another new computer with dissimilar hardware, you may can’t boot your new computer normally. In such condition, you can try Universal Restore of AOMEI Backupper to deploy the same operating system to a computer with dissimilar hardware.

This is the whole process of cloning. I believe you already know how to copy Windows 10 from one computer to another. If you think that reinstalling the system will lose important data, then cloning Windows 10 is worth trying.