Will my current up-to-date Win10 Pro SSD in my T510, plug into and work in a new P51 ?

[goretsky]

Hello,

The seven-year difference between the CPU and other hardware of the T510 and P51 is so great that this will likely not work unless a repair installation is performed, and I would then expect the system to have random intermittent, difficult-to-troubleshoot problems afterward.

You will spend far less time configuring and the system if you start with the factory install of Window 10 on the ThinkPad P51, customize it to your liking, install and configure any additional software required, and copy any data over from the T510's SSD to the P51's then if you attempt to move the drive over.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

[originalroundba]

Thanks for your reply...Not sure what you meant by the term 'repair'

My biggest motivator for wondering is obviously to simplfy the amount of work involved with starting from scratch.
Have upgraded our T510s over the years by bumping up to 8gb RAM, 500gb SSD's, migrating up through the various versions of Windows OS, all software has been kept current, etc.

And another motivator is to stay with Win 10 Pro but without the "creator update"...which I've kept off of my otherwise current Win 10 Pro OS...( assuming a new P51 / Win 10 Pro would already include the 'creator update'...maybe it won't )

If your speculation turns out to be correct, I guess a follow on question would be about finding the best migration software product to move things off my current SSD to the new onboard SSD that might help ease the transition...I searched a few weeks ago and ran across a couple references...need to find our what the best choice might be.. 

[richk]

I think it will actually boot.  All your "keeping up to date" won't help.  You will have drivers and OS files that are for hardware that is 6 years old and not intended to be used with windows 10.  I would guess your aversion to the creators update is related to its difficulties in working with your T510 machines that were not really compatible.  My experience has been that if there is a big change in technology, it is less work to simply reinstall and start over.  When I did otherwise, I ended up chasing down problems forever.

[sysprg]

I have ported from my R500 two Windows 10 systems to my P51. I've used AOMEI Partition Assistant to copy Windows partitions, Reg.exe & RegEdit.exe to modify MountedDevices, BcdBoot.exe to create BCD on P51 NVMe and for sure DISM /online to add critical drivers package to created windows volume on NVMe. Can't say that it was an easy and fast but those old systems runs fine since June when I've finished porting.

[originalroundba]

Thanks for your reply...I too kind of hoped it would at least boot up...then I could better see what issues there might be...seems like in this day and age...within the same family of Thinkpads...that route could be workable...maybe not.

PS:  I don't have an 'aversion' to Creator Update and the T510 has nothing to do with it.

In fact, our significantly upgraded T510's have been / contine to be outstanding for our needs and the only reason I'm considering a new Thinkpad is for the benefit of the much improved display, given my full time retirement hobby of photography and the post-processing / image editing I do.

The Creator Update is a set of features that I didn't ask for  / had no use for...and never having been any kind of blind fan-boy, I did not automatically install it just because Microsoft assumed I would.

And since MS said not installing it would have no negative effect on the normal routine update process I moved it into "hide" status so it doesn't install and normal updates have continued as MS said they would.

If the day should ever come where I want to install Creator Update, I can simply uncheck it from 'hide' status and it'll install.

Meanwhile, I thought I'd start asking around for any actual hands-on experience about an existing Thinkpad T510 Win 10 Pro SSD installing and working in a new Thinkpad P51.

[originalroundba]

Thanks for your reply and various specifics mentioned...

[originalroundba · Accepted solution]

A 100% clone copy of my T510 / Win 10 Pro SSD works absolutely perfectly on my new P51 !!

Had to change the BIOS setting from UEFI to LEGACY.
Connected my spare SSD clone to the USB port.
Booted right up..everything works exactly as it did in the T510.

For now, I'm going to get a P51 SSD install kit and permanently mount my spare SSD clone in one of the empty disk drive bays.  (right now its duct taped to the back of the display, cabled to a USB port).

Next to-do is to clone the new existing P-51 image off onto another spare SSD drive to have it as back up.

Then eventually I'll decide if I want to wipe the existing unused image off the original internal P-51 512GB drive and replace it with my clone copy image.....which will free up / leave an empty 500GB SSD drive internally for additional storage.

This upgrade couldn't have worked out simpler / smoother...running on it right now !