Let's take a quick look at a step-by-step guide detailing how to turn an SSD into a boot drive for your new or existing computer.

If you're upgrading from an HDD to an SSD, make the most of the extra speed it offers by setting the SSD as your boot drive.

If your Windows 11/10 PC won't boot after upgrading or installing a new SSD, check the boot order. The solutions provided here will help you fix this issue.

Load up a USB drive with the right software, and you’ll have a complete toolkit to restart, troubleshoot, and repair Windows PCs.

Here are Microsoft's own guides on building a Windows To Go drive, native booting from VHDs on a USB drive, as well as editing Windows boot files with BCDBoot and operating DISM via Command Prompt.

When you boot from this drive, the Windows Setup wizard comes up. On the second page of the wizard, ignore the big “Install now” button and click Repair your computer in the lower-left corner.

If your current PC is only using a mechanical hard-disk drive (HDD) and it's here that your Windows install lives, it's a great time to make the upgrade to a solid-state drive (SSD).

But I recommend a slightly different approach: Use the option to download the Windows 10 installer as an ISO file, and then use that file to make bootable installation media.