cannot use Win10 recovery drive(USB) to install Win10 on new SSD- the process always reverts to original drive

[idic5]

1) I have a Lenovo Thinkpad T450S with a 500 gb mech HDD , originally w/ Win8.1 and now upgraded to Win10. I bought a 256gb Transcend SSD and physically installed it, windows recognized it, and I initialized it (w/ a MBR ), and gave it a new drive letter.

2) I followed the Win10 procedure to create a WIn10 recovery usb drive linked to here many times apparently successfully. It said 'Recovery Drive is ready' after the 'Creating the Recovery Drive' process.
https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/ht117511

3) In the BIOS, I changed the boot sequence to boot from the USB device first

4) During the re-boot, the recovery process engaged, but the process sought to install the recovered Win10 on the existing HDD w/ Win10 on it already.

5) I saw in some threads on this subject that you have to disengage the old HDD to do this recovery process. I did this and the recovery process said, 'cannot find hard drive'. Another option in the recovery process said 'OS is locked. Unlock it.'

.

I seems that this Win10 recovery process will only do a fresh install over an existing install of win10 on an existing HDD. THe options available are : fresh install of win10 and you keep your files and fresh install of win10 and everything is wiped clean.

SO I need a process to recover to a new SSD. ANyone can tell me how?

 

[USAFRet]

2 options:

1. A direct migration from old 500GB drive to the new SSD
Macrium Reflect does this easily.
This assumes the drive sizes work. For going into a 250GB SSD, you want the total current used space to be below 200GB.

2. Image the old drive off on an external. Then install the new drive, and recover that image to the new drive.
Again, Macrium Reflect.

I've found the Windows backup and recovery options to be lacking in functionality

 

[SkyNetRising]

Did you try disconnecting HDD and connecting SSD, where HDD was connected? Launch recovery after that.