Ok, I am NOT talking about upgrading a hard drive per se!

My DAW machine currently has a 240Gab SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD. My laptop has a 500GB Crucial MX500 SSD.

I am wanting to swap these to have the 240GB in the laptop and the 500GB in my DAW machine. I don't particularly mind losing data as I plan to reinstall a clean Windows 10 Pro on both anyway.

Any advice on how to swap and reinstall Windows? I obviously can't do the usual of going to reset Windows as the drives will have drivers configured to be machines they are currently in.

Thanks

 

I am sure you can just swap 'em. No specific drivers involved.

 

hi. just swap them and reinstall windows on both. don't really get your question on advice. i'd install windows from usb sticks, and i would stay away from windows 10 on the daw machine. i tried all 3 popular windows' of 7-8.1-10 and went with win7 pro x64 on the daw machine and linux mint xfce 18.3 on the laptop. what benefit are you looking for from the swap? faster speed from the crucial? you won't, really, they are both pretty much the same speed reading/writing. storage? the 240gb is plenty from daws and plugins. get a cheap 1-2tb 7200 hdd and put it in the desktop for libs and loops-fast enough. also, pull the plug on the daw-desktop -> so you can turn off defender/firewall/updates. good luck mate ! let us know what route you go !
edit : i see u r into filmscoring so i suppose you using kontakt and omnisphere and u need bigger drive.
if so, i'd do this : buy a samsung ssd, use it in the desktop as main drive and add the 500gb crucial as second drive for the kontakt libs and put the sandisk into the laptop. samsung ssd's are the best..
ps.: i like ur mixes on soundcloud !

 

Last edited by a moderator: Mar 25, 2019

And if you create images with Macrium Reflect (free for personal use) you don't have to re-install everything. Then again, Windows LOVES to be re-installed...

 

It is not as easy as swapping one for the other. It is a headache that should be avoided. Problems with drivers, hardware, etc. Also the "machine fingerprint" . Windows looks at serial numbers of motherboards in the BIOS, MAC addresses of network cards, etc. There is one way to do it that always work.
You get 2 external hardrives at least 500 GB each. You clone your laptop in one drive and your DAW in the other. Now, you swap the drive from laptop with one in DAW and format both drives. After that all you need to do is restore your drives from their respective cloned drives.

Edit: you just need to make sure that your cloning software will allow you to go from 500 GB to 250 GB on restore. Some programs like Macrium Reflect Free will not allow you unless it is the paid version. If you need a copy of one that will do the job let me know.

 

Last edited: Mar 25, 2019

you can easily format drives during windows install - easy.

 

Technically, it is not needed when you are cloning but it is something I do out of habit, nevertheless.
(With HDD's a full format should be performed to make sure that the hard disk is not damaged. ON SSDs a Full Format should not be run)