Use present SSD (boot drive) in new Z97Pro4?

Dear Kerry,

 

Thank you for choosing ASRock and contacting us.

 

Regarding your question, we suggest installing the clean Windows instead of moving the SSD from another system.

Because the hardware is different, it may cause some system unstable or even cannot boot up.

 

Thank you!

Yours truly,

ASRock TSD

Thanks for the speedy reply.

Re: "In general, we do not recommend doing that." This senior was afraid of that. I do understand about the conflicts with the various drivers in my ASUS P8P67.

I don't have a CD of Windows 10 Pro. I've been upgrading since Windows 7 so I think I'd have to install 7 then upgrade to 10 if it's even possible.

I do have the product key for W10 Pro x64. I dread having to relearn how to do the ISO trick.

I just ordered a new Samsung T5 Portable SSD - 250GB - USB 3.1 External SSD so as to make a copy of my boot SSD in case I mess everything up. Will it help with the transition?

And I would highly advise to start with a FRESH Win10 Creators Edition.

Upgrading to Creators some/most times creates issues.

Kerry wrote: Thanks will try it. I'm not understanding your advice about "...creators." I couldn't install it because my key is for W10 pro. Much appreciation

Windows 10 Creators Edition is the newest 10 release.

All 10 keys work just fine.

Kerry wrote: Thanks will try it. I'm not understanding your advice about "...creators." I couldn't install it because my key is for W10 pro. Much appreciation PS: The https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 link in your reply is high jacked by ads. One must then take another step to get to the media creation tool. The URL is the very same URL that the tool is on https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10.

I had no problem with the link provided above, and if I click on the link to download the MediaCreationTool, its download box appeared immediately. I saw no ads whatsoever. Ads for what, on an MSoft website? It sounds like your browser is infected with some type of malware.

You tried to install Creators update at one time with your Win 10 key, and it didn't work? It should work, I just had a Windows 10 Home installation updated to Creators update via Windows update automatically. Using it now, no problems. I believe MSoft originally had issues with updating to Creators, but that should be fixed now.

Using a Windows ISO is not difficult. Any USB flash drive that I have out of the box is bootable. As said above, no need for Rufus. Sometimes flash drives larger than 16GB will have problems for some reason.

To use the ISO, once it is done downloading via the WindowsCreationTool, right click on its icon and select Mount. You should then see the Windows Explorer screen display all the ISO files. You then need to Select All of the files, so they are highlighted. Next you right click in the middle of the highlighted area, and find the Send to entry. The USB flash drive should be in the PC at that point. Find the USB flash drive in the Send to list, and select it. You should then see the Windows file copy dialog box, showing the copy of the ISO to the flash drive. That takes a few minutes, but that's all there is to it. When the copy is complete, you will need to right click on the ISO file and select Unmount, or it will appear as a drive in the Explorer drive list. That's it for the ISO trick.

You will need to select the ISO file option when using the Creation tool. The prompts asking what you want to do are to me clear, but if you have questions let us know.

Be sure to use a USB port on the board's IO panel. If you have a USB 3.0 flash drive, you should be able to use a USB 3.0 port, otherwise use a USB 2.0 port.