Moving SSD from T520 to T470

[dhave]

(1) My wife runs Windows 10 Pro on her aging T520. It has a 500Gb SSD (SATA, of course).

(2) She's getting a new T470. We bought it with a SATA hd so that I could replace the hd with the SSD from her T520.

(3) I had been thinking I could just pull the hd from the T470, plug in the SSD taken from her T520, reboot, let Windows 10 find the drivers it needs, and Bob's your uncle.

What's wrong with this picture?

[I know this is Windows question more than a TP question, but I have more confidence in the answers I get here than what I might find elsewhere.]

Thanks.

[MikalE]

You might have to authenticate Windows again. I don't know what sort of anti-piracy crap MS has built into Windows 10 so I don't know if it will authenticate on a different machine.

Anyone else?

[dr_st]

You might have to authenticate Windows again. I don't know what sort of anti-piracy crap MS has built into Windows 10 so I don't know if it will authenticate on a different machine.

The same anti-piracy crap that was built into any version of Windows since Vista, essentially. I don't recall anything significant changing in that regard.

However, that T470 should have the license and the SLIC tables to legally run Win10, so even if it requests reactivation, it should be easy to do over the net or the phone with Microsoft.

[dhave]

Thanks, MikalE and dr_st.

I have the product key for the Win 10 Pro installation on the T520, so I should be O.K. Also, that license came with standalone copy of Windows; i.e., it wasn't an OEM pre-installation or whatever.

Apart from licensing and activation hurdles, do you foresee any technical problems?

I'd like to think that Windows 10 could recognize the different hardware environment and pull in any drivers it needs. That may be wishful thinking.

[dr_st]

It should work fine with the basic things. Whatever it cannot pull, you should be able to install manually from Lenovo's site, or Intel's site. It should not crash like XP does when the IDE controller changes under it.

[dhave]

It should work fine with the basic things. Whatever it cannot pull, you should be able to install manually from Lenovo's site, or Intel's site. It should not crash like XP does when the IDE controller changes under it.

That's very encouraging to hear. Thank you.

I realized that, while I've done a number of migrations to a new drive on the same Thinkpad, only twice have I moved a drive with its Windows installation from one Thinkpad to another, and that's been a while.

[MikalE]

The Lenovo updater should find any drivers that Windows misses.

[dhave]

A user on the Lenovo forum said that it should be as simple as I described in my first post *if* I set the T470 to boot legacy BIOS and not UEFI. The T520 is set to boot legacy BIOS.

Opinions? Thank you.

[dr_st]

*if* I set the T470 to boot legacy BIOS and not UEFI

That part is true. UEFI and Legacy boot configurations are not interchangeable.

[dhave]

Thanks again, MikalE and dr_st, for your helpful replies. My wife isn't actually getting the T470 until Christmas, so I've got a few days to plan. Your info was invaluable.