New Hard Drive Laptop

pcLad

Hello

I wish to find out if I install a new hard disk on my laptop can I reinstall my windows 8 pro upgrade back on to the same laptop or will it say that I need to purchase a new copy (because it might think that it's a different laptop because of the upgrade) Not sure how to install windows on new drive would be glad of help and advise. Also hoping to upgrade ram at the same time is this safe to do Can my laptop Cope. And is my old hard drive worth much 500Gb hoping to upgrade to 1tb

Thanks

No silly replies please
really need some one who knows their stuff

(PcLaD:p

coylemj

'No silly replies' is like the admonition 'no time wasters ' in donedeal car ads, it can turn off a lot of people.

Upgrade the RAM first and make sure everything is working ok before you start the process of upgrading the disk drive, that will be the easy part. Under no circumstances change both at the same time, that is asking for trouble.

Do you have an external hard drive? If you do, the best way to upgrade the drive is to create recovery CDs, do a full backup to the external drive, then swap in the new drive, boot the recovery CD and do a full restore to the new hard drive.

riclad

My pc ,makes 3 recovery cds, make 6cds, eg 2 copys of each .
i,m using win7 pro.

Hold onto old drive for a week, ie make sure new install is working ok.
See here ,
http://www.peats.com/cgi-bin/catalog_v3.cgi?id=305&type=subcat
see www.crucial.com for info re your memory, download memory scanner.

coylemj

riclad wrote: »

My pc ,makes 3 recovery cds, make 6cds, eg 2 copys of each .

If the recovery CDs don't bring him to the point where he can start the full restore, the OP can just reinsert the old hard drive and he's back to where he started. It's not like there will be a single point of failure if he only makes one set of recovery CDs so I see no need for a duplicate set given the extremely small probability that one of them will be a dud.

hearny

You have a couple of options to upgrade, a usb to sata adapter is worth investing in.

if you install a fresh copy of Windows 8 you might have issues when you go to activate it. I have it on my macbook using a dual boot, The first time I installed it it went on no bother.

I upgraded the SSD in the macbook and had to reinstall Windows 8 again, after a while it warned me that the licence was for an upgrade and not a fresh install, I didn't do anything with it and the warning went away, Im sure it will come back so my plan is to reinstall windows 7 and then upgrade it to Windows 8 if a call to Microsoft fails.

If you have a Windows 7 product key you can download the Windows 7 iso files and burn them to DVD from here, make sure to download the correct one you have the licence for:
http://www.mydigitallife.info/windows-7-iso-x86-and-x64-official-direct-download-links-ultimate-professional-and-home-premium/

Put the new hard drive in the laptop install Windows 7, activate it and then upgrade to Windows 8. It will take a little longer to setup but should go through without any issues.

Your second option is to clone the drive directly to your new drive but a fresh install is always better.

Be careful ordering 1TB 2.5" Hard drives as some of them are different height dimensions so they may not fit into the laptop or they may take up more space reducing the airflow and causing the laptop to overheat.

If I were you I would not be too bothered about storage and get a good sized SSD instead and if you have an optical drive replace it with one of these:

Optical Bay Hard drive Caddy