I'm trying to upgrade to a new PC but want to keep my old 2TB NVME SSD as a secondary drive. It has lots of files and photos that I don't want to lose. My old SSD is an Intel PCIe 3.0 model with Windows 10 installed, and both of my systems are Intel-based. Can I simply unplug the SSD from my old computer and plug it into the new one? Will everything work fine?
4 Answers
A good idea is to back up your important files elsewhere first. Once you plug it into the new PC, you can then do a fresh install of Windows if you want to start clean.
Is your SSD encrypted with BitLocker? If it isn't, just pop it into an available M.2 NVMe slot on your new machine and you should be able to access your files without any issues. If it is encrypted, make sure you have your recovery key handy to unlock it.
If your SSD is just being used as a data drive and not as a boot drive, you can simply plug it in and it should work right away. However, if it was your primary boot drive, you’ll need to change the boot priority in the BIOS to get it to work properly.
It sounds like you want to use your old SSD as a secondary drive in the new PC. That should work just fine! You might run into some file permission issues, but those are easy to sort out. Just check how the drive is partitioned and consider removing any unnecessary boot partitions if you want to clear up space.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t enable encryption, since I’m not familiar with setting it up. Would it have been automatic in Windows 10?