On 10/2/2020 8:49 AM, Percival P. Cassidy wrote:
On 10/2/20 10:20 AM, RayLopez99 wrote:
The scenario:Â* I have a x64 bit Windows 10 machine that's a laptop
with decent but 5+ year old hardware, e.g., an SSD but an Intel i5
chip with 4 GB RAM.

I wish copy the Macrium Reflect image disc from this hardware to a
tricked out, gaming type, state of the art tower PC with say the
latest hardware (a bigger SSD but the fastest, with another SSD or HDD
in tandem, i7 or AMD Ryzen-whatever multicore machine, 32 GB RAM, etc).

Any issues?

One issue I see is that with the free version of Macrium Relect, you
cannot restore the image file to dissimilar hardware says their home
page.Â* So I will upgrade to the Home paid version, however, my
question is whether you can pay Macrium one time for the upgrade and
it's good for life or whether you have to pay every year?Â* I'm not
talking about their 12 month support, with is limited to one year
after your purchase a license, but the license for the paid Home
version that allows you to restore to dissimilar hardware.Â* I hate to
buy a license then find in 18 months when I do this restore that it's
expired for dissimilar hardware restores.

I have upgraded from time to time to get additional features, but it's
my understanding that a license for a particular version never expires
-- but after a certain (possibly unspecified in advance) date there will
be no more bug fixes for that version.

The second, bigger issue is whether some programs will break if I
restore the old image file onto newer hardware?Â* I suspect some
programs will, but I'm guessing MS-Office, my Visual Studio program I
use for coding, and maybe some of my chess programs probably won't,
unless they have a special key tied to hardware.Â* On this last point,
I do realize that upgrading WIndows 10 Home to newer hardware will
necessitate I spend $100 or so for a new license from Microsoft, since
the old WIndows 10 key is tied to the old hardware, and I'm prepared
to pay that.


Obviously the main reason for the restore is that I don't want to
reinstall a couple of dozen programs (some of which I no longer have
the original installation DVD/CDs for).

Thanks in advance to the usual posters and some of you newer ones for
any advice.


I did the restore-to-different-hardware from one Asus desktop
motherboard to one a few years newer. I don't recall any problems. Any
license keys would have been preserved. I cannot be sure, but I think
that *maybe* the restore-to-different-hardware simply zaps out the
hardware-specific drivers for the previous hardware and lets the
"generic" configuration automatically load the new-hardware-specific
drivers instead of trying to run with the wrong drivers.

Perce


I use the version of Acronics True Image that is offered free for hard
drives I own by the manufacturer, and can make the hardware changes.
Sometimes, you have to load new drivers in the right order to get it
working. Issues can be networking or other problems blocking access to
the Windows update.

The last time I did this, it was from a 2500K to a 8700K processor and
motherboard, but with the new boot drive being a MVNE drive, and it was
challenging getting the MVNE drive to boot. I believe I had to build the
drive on a SATA drive and load the drivers on that, and then enable the
MVNE drive and copy that result to the MVNE drive. That was a Win 7 PC.
Win 10 might have the drivers you might need from the start.