- #Replacing hard drive windows 8 upgrade
- #Replacing hard drive windows 8 software
- #Replacing hard drive windows 8 windows 8.1
When complete click the “Finish” button to close the dialog box. Select the empty drive to create a Recovery Drive and click Next. This drive will be totally wiped so make sure it doesn’t have any data on it and definitely not the drive with the system image on it. You will then need to select the Recovery Drive from a list of USB devices. Once done, plug in your USB flash drive that you will use to recover and from “Control Panel” – “System and Security” – “File History” you will need to click on the “Recovery” link just above the “System Image Backup” link in the bottom left corner.Ĭlick on “Create a recovery drive” and when prompted to allow changes click “Yes”. On the confirmation page click “Start Backup”. You can include more drives on the next page but I only want the system drive and its related partitions and they are selected by default. In my example here, I have an internal drive plugged in so I’m backing up to that. It will run a quick scan of available options and then present your choices (DVD or hard disk) to store your system image on as a backup. Now in the bottom left click the “System Image Backup” link. Next up choose “Save backup copies of your files with File History” under “System and Security” (or you can click on “System and Security” and then “File History”). You can get to this from the desktop (hover over the bottom right corner and scroll up and click on Settings) or from the Start menu’s Apps page under the “Windows System” section.
#Replacing hard drive windows 8 windows 8.1
In Windows 8.1 you need to get to the “Control Panel”. Unless you are opting for DVD backup, make sure you have the drive capable of taking the backup image plugged in (or as a secondary drive). You cannot image straight to the new disk drive so keep that replacement disk away from the PC for now. You will also need a USB flash drive at least 256Mb in size that you don’t mind being wiped as this will be used to boot your PC (the ability to boot from CD no longer exists) and of course you will need the bigger hard disk, or a disk that has more space on it than the space used on your current disk. You will need lots of DVD’s, network storage or a secondary drive (that can be internal or external) with enough space on it for the amount of space used on the system drive (usually the C: drive).
#Replacing hard drive windows 8 upgrade
So, because I had this difficulty finding everything, I figured others must be too so I’ve listed the simple steps required to upgrade to a larger hard disk on a Windows 8.1 machine. Everything you need can be found and it is just as easy as in Windows 7. After a bit of hunting around in the Control Panel, it looks as if they have just changed the names of a few things. I thought to myself that surely Microsoft wouldn’t have dumped the backup and restore feature that made this task so simple.
#Replacing hard drive windows 8 software
I did a quick search on the internet but most things pointed to purchasing some software or referred to Windows 7 articles. A simple task on Windows 7 but not so on Windows 8.1. I thought I would upgrade the hard drive of my son’s Windows 8.1 PC.