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Help with changing a laptop hard drive to a ssd drive

Hi just got a 256GB ssd drive delivered but hopefully someone can answer this quickie -got a 750GB hard drive in my laptop so I have been reading up and see I cannot clone the drive with this as obviously this drive is too small but can backup the whole laptop drive on to an external drive which I can no probs and then select what to copy over but my question is as the laptop came with windows 7 pre-installed so do not have a physical disc can I still put the windows 7 os onto the ssd as I am not going down the cloning drive route but just copying parts over and do I still need a sata to usb cable which I can buy for this procedure.THANKS.
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  • grumpycrab
    grumpycrab Posts: 5,009 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Bake Off Boss!
    mike33 wrote: »
    got a 750GB hard drive in my laptop
    Best to see details of what you have already. Unplug any external/USB drives and click start then enter "diskmgmt.msc" without the "" and tell us what you see (or submit a screen print).
    If you put your general location in your Profile, somebody here may be able to come and help you.
  • mike33_2
    mike33_2 Posts: 272 Forumite
    grumpycrab wrote: »
    Best to see details of what you have already. Unplug any external/USB drives and click start then enter "diskmgmt.msc" without the "" and tell us what you see (or submit a screen print).
    Hi thanks for the reply-done a screen print in paint of my disk management now to see how to get it into my messages and upload it-give us a sec.
  • gjchester
    gjchester Posts: 5,741 Forumite
    mike33 wrote: »
    Hi just got a 256GB ssd drive delivered but hopefully someone can answer this quickie -got a 750GB hard drive in my laptop so I have been reading up and see I cannot clone the drive with this as obviously this drive is too small but can backup the whole laptop drive on to an external drive which I can no probs and then select what to copy over but my question is as the laptop came with windows 7 pre-installed so do not have a physical disc can I still put the windows 7 os onto the ssd as I am not going down the cloning drive route but just copying parts over and do I still need a sata to usb cable which I can buy for this procedure.THANKS.


    Its not quite that simple. Many programs will install files into the windows directory so just not copying the program over can lead to issues.

    However first thing is to look on your PC (with the old drive installed) for a program that lets you create recovery disks and do that first before you start to do anything on the PC.

    Look at your hard drive and see home much free space there is, if you have more than 240 gb in use you'll need to think what you may have to not reinstall.

    You may also want to use the Windows Easy Transfer tool, this can save all your data but will not move programs. It can be used to determine how much data you have. The Windows install will take 20 to 40 GB, and if you add the the size of your data and its close to the new SSD then it may not be worth the hassle to do this.
  • grumpycrab
    grumpycrab Posts: 5,009 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Bake Off Boss!
    mike33 wrote: »
    Hi thanks for the reply-done a screen print in paint of my disk management now to see how to get it into my messages and upload it-give us a sec.
    OR for Disk0 just list partition names and capacities/free space...
    If you put your general location in your Profile, somebody here may be able to come and help you.
  • flashg67
    flashg67 Posts: 4,101 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    If you have the windows license key, you could download a windows 7 .iso, (this is not illegal) burn to a disc then use it to reinstall a fresh copy of windows, activated by your own key, to avoid transferring any junk over. This presumes you can also reinstall your other programs from disc or download though.
    Then put the old disk in a usb caddy and transfer over what you need
  • mike33_2
    mike33_2 Posts: 272 Forumite
    grumpycrab wrote: »
    OR for Disk0 just list partition names and capacities/free space...
    Disk0=102 MB healthy(OEM partition)recovery 19.53 GB NTFS-healthy( system,active,primary partition)
  • grumpycrab
    grumpycrab Posts: 5,009 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Bake Off Boss!
    edited 30 January 2015 at 1:57PM
    mike33 wrote: »
    Disk0=102 MB healthy(OEM partition)recovery 19.53 GB NTFS-healthy( system,active,primary partition)
    Ok, so you're using about 700GB? won't quite fit onto the SSD ;-)
    Reinstall Windows7 time... make sure you have the key. ISOs here
    http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-windows_install/cannot-find-digital-river-download-site/66a8439b-0d16-4b70-92f7-1c8486a46ebf


    EDIT: sorry I jumped the gun...you are using about 350GB then? Resinstall Windows7 onto the SSD...
    If you put your general location in your Profile, somebody here may be able to come and help you.
  • mike33_2
    mike33_2 Posts: 272 Forumite
    freespace on my c drive is 353.53 GB
  • mike33_2
    mike33_2 Posts: 272 Forumite
    Thanks for all your answers-very much appreciated-the laptop is just over 3 years old and as I said in my first post windows 7 64 bit came pre-installed so not sure about the key or isos-will I have these as I said windows 7 pre-installed if so I will have to dig these out.
  • grumpycrab
    grumpycrab Posts: 5,009 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Bake Off Boss!
    mike33 wrote: »
    windows 7 64 bit came pre-installed
    The following (amongst many others) will tell you what your Microsoft product keys are http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html
    If you put your general location in your Profile, somebody here may be able to come and help you.
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