New laptop upgrade to SSD, restore Windows only?

[edro]

I have a new Win10 Dell laptop with a mechanical HDD.
I want to upgrade it to an SSD of lesser size.
I do not have the Dell recovery media (must request it).

Can I create a Win10 recovery image on a USB stick, swap in the SSD, then recover to Win10 onto the SSD?
Would this give me a clean Win10 recovery? Or would it still have bloatware?

Any issues with it being of a lesser size?
Do Dell laptops usually have different partitions that may not be part of the recovery media?

Thanks!

 

[edro]

It looks like I can create a Windows 10 bootable media device (DVD or USB) using the Windows Media Creation Tool.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

That should work!

 

[sweenish]

When my friend helped me upgrade mine, he used gparted to clone my drive, and then used a clean ISO to repair the install because the cloning misses some parts.

 

[Braxos]

You can create a recovery media that has the windows key inside and can be used on any drive ,from windows itself.

Somewhere on settings create recovery media.

 

[JackMDS]

This cost only $25 and it a good App to have in general.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832200093&cm_re=acronis-_-32-200-093-_-Product

Use it to clone the current HD to SSD and be done with.

Please note that SSD can be small than the HD but it must be a little bigger than the size of the space on the HD that need to be cloned.

If you read the instruction and know what to do it would takes about 8Min to clone and 8 Minute to Restore.

 

[edro]

I wanted to avoid cloning, as it would retain the bloatware and I would have to get a USB adapter for one of the drives.

I created a USB Win10 recovery media using the Windows Media Creation Tool.
I will swap out the drives and try it out tonight.

I'll let everyone know how it goes.

 

[OlyAR15]

If win10 is already activated on your laptop, then you should just be able to swap drives and do a clean install of win10. Since the hardware is the same, it will activate online automatically.

You should download the basic win10 drivers such as the network, audio, chipset drivers before you re-install Windows, just in case (especially the network driver). Of course, if you have a second computer, that won't really be necessary.

 

[edro]

Posting from new laptop.

The Media Creation Tool onto a USB was perfect.
I installed the SSD, booted to USB, deleted partition, recreated, and installed Win10.
Everything was fast and easy and now I have a vanilla Win10 without Dell bloatware.
Win10 found all drivers.

 

[Puffnstuff]

You can copy that restore image off the hd and place it on a dvd to have for later if you want to run the bios recovery utility on it. When I clean installed my alienware laptop I just made a copy of it and put it away just in case I wanted to use it later, such as if I were to sell the laptop I can revert it back to 7 home.

 

[vailr]

@JackMDS: the free utility called "AOMEI Partition Assistant" can do the exact same type of drive cloning. Other functions include: easily & quickly create a boot and run "Windows to Go" 8/8.1/10 from any 32 Gb USB thumb drive, partition alignment, and more.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/aomei_partition_assistant.html