How to Install Windows 10 on SSD from USB or HDD?

This article not only tells how to install Windows 10 on SSD from USB, but also displays how to put Windows 10 on SSD from HDD in case that you don’t have the USB for Windows 10 installation.

By Michael / Last Updated April 14, 2021

Recently, SSDs are at a discount, and so, I bought a 1TB one in our local digital store. I had heard that to install Windows 10 on SSD can enhance the performance of the PC so I decided to do that. However, I am a complete novice. So, where should I start?

Install Windows 10 on SSD or HDD?

SSD is short for solid-state drive. It’s a storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies to store data persistently, typically using flash memory while HDD stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage and one or more rigid rapidly rotating platter coated with magnetic material.

So, should we install Windows 10 on SSD or HDD?

Compared with HDD, SSD is much faster since it uses flash memory to read and write data while the HDD uses the spinning disks to read and write data. Besides, SSD has no moving parts, so it is safer than HDD and more resistant to shake and vibration; it can also help reduce the noise while working. Moreover, its tiny size can also save much precious space for your computer case. Due to those merits of SSD, I recommend installing Windows 10 on SSD instead.

(Check the following table to learn its other advantages of SSD:)

How to install Windows 10 from USB?

In most cases, users prefer to install OS with CD while nowadays, many computers especially laptops have no CD drives. In this case, a USB installation media is a better alternative. And also, USB is more portable and a safer place to store Windows 10 because CD could be scratched sometimes and the data on it could be damaged. So, this time, I will put the Windows 10 installation file into a USB flash drive to make an installation USB drive for example.

Part 1. Create a Windows 10 installation USB

If you already have prepared an installation USB, just ignore Part 1 and go straight to Part 2. Otherwise, you should create one by using Microsoft’s media creation tool.

1. Download the media creation tool and run it as an administrator.

2. Hit “Accept” in the “Applicable notices and license terms” window.

3. Tick “Create installation media for another PC” and hit “Next”.

4. Select language, architecture, and edition and click on “Next”.

5. Tick “USB flash drive” and hit “Next”.

To ensure a successful Windows 10 installation, the USB flash drive needs to be at least 8GB.

6. Choose your prepared USB flash drive from “Removable drives” and then, hit “Next”.

7. Once completed, Windows 10 will be installed to the device and thus, the installation media is created.

Part 2. Boot the PC from the USB drive

1. Shut down your PC. Remove the old drive from it and install the new SSD. In order to make the installation easier, you’d better keep only the SSD attached to the PC and after the installation is done, you can consider installing the old hard drive back to your PC if you wish to.

2. Plug your USB flash drive to the PC.

3. Boot the PC, press and hold the BIOS key right away (F2, Del, F10, or F12, depending on the manufacture) until the BIOS screen is displayed.

4. In BIOS, navigate to Boot Manager and set the installation USB to be the first boot device.

5. Save the settings and quit BIOS. Then, your PC will boot from the installation USB.

Part 3. Windows 10 installation on the new SSD

1. When the computer boot again, you will enter Windows Setup. There, you’ll select language, time and currency format, and keyboard or input method. After it’s done, click on “Next” to proceed.

2. Click on “Install Now”.

3. To activate Windows 10, you must enter your product key. If you don’t have one, just click on “I don’t have a product key” and you can still finish the installation.

4. Select your desired Windows 10 edition from the list.

5. Tick “I accept the license terms” and hit “Next”.

6. Select the custom installation.

7. Select the SSD drive where you want to install the OS and hit “Next”.

8. Now, Windows 10 is being installed. Just wait the installation to be completed.

9. When it’s finished, your PC will be rebooted again.

10. Once Windows 10 restarts, immediately press and hold the BIOS key again to enter the BIOS. Then, select your SSD drive as the first boot drive.

11. After Windows 10 reboot, select a region and hit “Yes”. On the next page, select your keyboard layout and hit “Yes”.

12. Now, what’s left is to follow the onscreen guide to finish the setup of your computer. Answer the questions appearing on the screen and set up an account to log in to Windows 10. Both Microsoft account or a local offline account is allowed.

Wait a few minutes. Windows 10 will get all things ready and automatically log you onto the desktop. After that, you can install any drives you want to make your Windows 10 PC run more smoothly

How to install Windows 10 on SSD from HDD?

The above method is to clean install Windows 10 on solid-state drives via the created installation USB media. And that required you to reinstall other programs on the new system drive. What if you just want to install the Windows 10 to SSD from the current HDD, and not reinstall everything from scratch? Or you don’t have the proper USB flash drive or CD for Win 10 installation?

To put your current Windows 10 operating system onto SSD from HDD, the easiest way is to use some third-party software to migrate OS from your old drive to the new SSD. In this way, you needn’t reinstall the operating system which frees you from much trouble. Here, I recommend AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard that supports migrating Windows 10 from MBR disk to MBR disk within clicks. More than this, this freeware is also able to clone hard drives, clone partitions, and wipe system disk.

1. The standard version of this software can only migrate OS from MBR to MBR. If you wish to migrate OS from MBR to GPT, GPT to GPT, or GPT to MBR, you must upgrade to the pro version. 2. If you migrate OS from MBR to GPT or GPT to MBR, you must change the boot mode (either from Legacy BIOS to UEFI or from UEFI to Legacy BIOS) to let the OS boot normally.

Free download the disk manager to migrate OS from an old disk to a new SSD.

Step 1. Connect your new SSD to your PC; install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard; click “Migrate OS to SSD” in the upper left wizard.

Step 2. Select a piece of unallocated space on your target SSD. Then, hit “Next”.

Step 3. Here, you’re able to customize the size of the partition on the destination disk. After it’s done, hit “Next”.

Step 4. After returning to the main interface. Click on “Apply” on the upper left and hit “Proceed” to start the migration.

If you want to transfer all data (not only the operating system partition but also other data partitions) from the old drive to the new SSD, please consider trying the feature of disk clone.

Further Reading

There’re 2 extra common problems you could run into in Windows 10 installation. In the following content, I’ll explain what they are and meanwhile, provide fixes.

Can’t install Windows 10 on SSD

When you try to install Windows 10 on your new SSD, you might meet the error messages such as “Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk is of the GPT partition style” and “Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk has an MBR partition table. On EFI systems, Windows can only be installed to GPT disks”. Thus, the easiest way is to correspondingly convert GPT to MBR or MBR to GPT with AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional.

Besides, you can also change the boot mode. For example, if the PC shows the first error mentioned above and meanwhile, your motherboard supports Legacy + UEFI/CMS boot, you can enable UEFI boot mode in BIOS to fix the error.

1. Reboot the PC and hold the function key to enter BIOS.

2. Locate the Boot tab with the arrow keys on your keyboard and select “UEFI/BIOS Boot Mode” > “UEFI”, then, hit “ENTER”.

Installed Windows 10 on SSD won’t boot

There’re computer owners complaining that after installing Windows 10 on SSD, they cannot boot from the new drive. This error can be caused by the factors: 1. The SSD is not the first boot device; 2. The system partition is not active; 3. The Master Boot Record of the cloned SSD is damaged. So, correspondingly, to fix the error, you might as well consider setting the SSD as the first boot device in BIOS, make the system partition active, and rebuild MBR of the SSD.

Conclusion

To install Windows 10 on SSD is never an easy job without a proper guide. So, in this tutorial, I have tried to explain every step in the most explicit words and hopefully, you’ve gotten the gist of them and now, you can perform those operations on your own. Meanwhile, in the other half of the article, I provided some pragmatic ways to help deal with 2 common Windows 10 issues – failed SSD Windows 10 installation and unsuccessful Windows 10 boot on SSD. I believe with the help of the AOMEI product, you can handle them with ease.

Easy Way to Install Windows 10 on SSD

What’s the Best Procedure to Install Windows 10 on SSD?

«I want to install Windows 10 OS on a new SSD from HDD. I plan to use the new SSD as the boot drive while the old WD 1TB hard drive as a storage drive. What is the best or easiest procedure for extracting the old Windows OS from the old hard drive? I am not sure how to identify the OS files.»

Usually, there are two ways for you to install Windows 10 on SSD. One is to clone Windows 10 from the source drive to the target drive, and the other one is to reinstall Windows 10 on SSD from scratch, namely a clean install or fresh install. Both are approachable and efficient methods to boot Windows 10 from SSD eventually. However, the former one is recommended as the prior choice after comparison. By cloning Windows 10 from HDD to SSD is the most straightforward and less time-consuming.

Nonetheless, if you want to reinstall Windows 10 on SSD, you might spend a little more effort. You know, Windows 10 is only free if you are upgrading from the previous Windows version. If you want a fresh install, you should have a legit product key for the Windows 10. Otherwise, your best option would be cloning system partition to SSD by using several clicks toВ transfer Windows 10 OS to SSD.

#1. How to Install Windows 10 on SSD by OS Migration

No matter you choose to get the old Windows system installed on the SSD and then upgrade your computer to Windows 10 or migrate the new Windows 10 partition to the new SSD after a successful Windows 10 upgrade, you need a partition managerВ for help. EaseUS Partition Master is the top recommendation of a magic partition tool that lets you install Windows 10 on SSD from HDD/SSD within several clicks.

Note: The operation of migrating OS to SSD or HDD will delete and remove existing partitions and data on your target disk when there is not enough unallocated space on the target disk. If you saved important data there, back up them to an external hard drive in advance.

Step 1.В Select «Migrate OS» from the top menu. Select the SSD or HDD as the destination disk and click «Next».

Step 2. Click «Continue» after check warning message.В The data and partitions on the target disk will be deleted. Make sure that you’ve backed up important data in advance. If not, do it now.

Step 3. Preview the layout of your target disk. You can also click the disk layout options to customize the layout of your target disk as you want. Then click «Proceed» to start migrating your OS to a new disk

#2. How to Reinstall Windows 10 on SSD by Windows 10 Installation Media

Sometimes you have to start a fresh install of Windows 10, mainly when your current OS has been crashing or freezing a lot. As long as you can carefully follow the below guide and prepare all the necessary tools beforehand, you can make it on your own, and finally run a fresh OS on the new SSD.

First of all, to reinstall Windows 10 on SSD manually, you need to create a bootable installation media. If you don’t have the bootable media created, click here toВ download the Media Creation Tool, and next use the tool to create a bootable USB flash drive (min4GB) or create the ISO file and burn to a CD/DVD disc.

With the bootable installation media at hand, now head to the detailed steps to reinstall Windows 10 on SSD.

Step 1. Remove the old HDD and connect the new SSD to your computer.

Step 2. Insert the bootable USB flash drive, and change your computer boot order to the USB drive in BIOS settings. Make sure that you boot PC from the installation media. The installation should start.

Step 3.В During the installation process, skip the steps which ask for a product key and select the option I am Reinstalling Windows 10 on this PC, and activation will not be an issue, your PC will have a digital entitlement stored on the Microsoft Servers.

Step 4.В While installing, your system will reboot. At that point, you may need to go into your BIOS settings again and change the boot order so your system boots from your new SSD. Otherwise, the installation may start all over again. Do not remove the installation media at this point.

Step 5. When Windows 10 has finished installing and the desktop appears, you can shut down your system and remove the installation media. The next time you start the computer, you will boot Windows 10 from the new SSD.

What If You Cannot Install Windows 10 on SSD?

Chances are that when you choose to use the Windows installation media way to reinstall Windows 10 on SSD, some strange error messages will prevent you from successfully installing the operating system on the selected hard drive.

1. Can’t install Windows 10 on a new SSD

For a new SSD that is not initialized at the beginning, you need to connect it to the computer and initialize the SSD to an MBR or GPT style and then start to install OS on it.В

2. Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk is of the GPT partition style.

Usually, the error message that appears on the screen is Windows cannot be installed onto this disk. This computer’s hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure the disk’s controller is enabled in the computer BIOS menu. We fixed this problem in the article onВ how to fix Windows cannot be installed to this disk.

No matter it’s the problem of SSD not initialized or the selected disk is of GPT partition style, you can easily fix the trouble with the help of EaseUS Partition Master, and continue installing Windows 10 on SSD without any hassle.