Help with changing a laptop hard drive to a ssd drive

mike33_2

Maybe I should have left well alone as only bought the ssd yesterday as been told it can make my laptop boot up faster and improve things etc as its getting slower with age.

mike33_2

grumpycrab wrote: »

The following (amongst many others) will tell you what your Microsoft product keys are http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

Thanks grumpycrab I do no about Microsoft product keys and with having different operating systems on different computers over the years you need to imput the key or the os will not go onto your computer but I was just getting confused as could not remember going over the procedure 3 years ago of imputing a product key etc as windows 7 was pre-installed and if you get the os on a disc the product key will be obviously on it.

mike33_2

flashg67 wrote: »

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

Right a simple look underneath the laptop and hey presto a product key sticker so now im getting somewhere and a google search for windows 7 iso and now burn to disc should do it and reinstall and instead of putting other programmes on disc could I just reinstall from the external hard drive from back up.

peace-maker

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...

You can copy a larger to smaller, I have done it.
This is what I would do, though it is a bit involved.

1, Delete/copy off data so there is less than 256GB left on the big (source drive) - say 230GB
2, Download Gparted burn to cd
3, resize the partition to less than 256GB
4, download clonezilla, burn to CD
5, copy the partition across to your new drive.

That would bypass the windows keys/installing of programs issue. In my mind it's less of a headache, to do this than set up a new system!

Edit: Do backup all your data first anyway!

grumpycrab

mike33 wrote: »

Right a simple look underneath the laptop and hey presto a product key sticker

Did you not see my Belarc link?

mike33 wrote: »

a google search for windows 7 iso

Did you not see my ISOs link?

mike33_2

grumpycrab wrote: »

Did you not see my Belarc link?

Did you not see my ISOs link?

Apologies did not see the iso link as just thought the belaric link was a discussion about Microsoft product keys.

dogmaryxx

Latest official site

Microsoft Software Recovery

prowla

How much data is on your 750 GB disk?
If it's less than 250 GB (ie. your new SSD), then you should be able to clone to it.
In the past, I've used the free version of Macrium Reflect.

mike33_2

prowla wrote: »

How much data is on your 750 GB disk?
If it's less than 250 GB (ie. your new SSD), then you should be able to clone to it.
In the past, I've used the free version of Macrium Reflect.

Hi I have about 328GB data on the laptop out of the 750GB disk but I could backup about 163GB of that on a external hard drive which are steam games and read if you copy the steam apps folder all the games are intact for later use then uninstall all the games off my hard drive and then have 165GB of data left so less than the 256 ssd drive so then I should be able to clone it with the free version of Macrium Reflect you suggested.

prowla

mike33 wrote: »

Hi I have about 328GB data on the laptop out of the 750GB disk but I could backup about 163GB of that on a external hard drive which are steam games and read if you copy the steam apps folder all the games are intact for later use then uninstall all the games off my hard drive and then have 165GB of data left so less than the 256 ssd drive so then I should be able to clone it with the free version of Macrium Reflect you suggested.

I've done that on two Windows 7 machines. Reflect takes a little bit of figuring out, but you aren't changing your original disk (apart from installing Reflect on it!), so it's available for reversion.

As another trick with a laptop, depending upon the model, some will allow a 2nd SSD to be put into a mini PCIe Wi-Fi card slot! I haven't tried that, as I don't have a suitable laptop.