New laptop, what's the best way to install windows?

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jimthenagual

jimthenagual

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Apr 8, 2012
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I just got my new laptop today. It's the Asus rog g752vs, and I ordered one without an M.2 drive, as I already have a Samsung 950 pro 256gb M.2 drive I want to put in it.

I plan on installing the drive today, then reinstalling windows onto it. What's the best way to do this? Should I use data migration, or should I do a fresh install?

If I am going to reinstall, I don't see my windows 10 license number. Someone in an earlier thread mentioned that the key is buried in the bios, and windows 10 will automatically find it. Is this magic true?

If I am going to reinstall windows onto the M.2 drive, can I wipe out all the data, including recovery partition, from the existing HDD? What is the point of the recovery drive anyways? Never had a laptop, always desktops where I install windows, and no recovery partition is ever used.

Anyways, can someone give me a quick tutorial on what is the best procedure. Thank you very much in advance.
 
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Personally, I neither like nor trust original OEM installs of Windows, including signature editions of Windows, and I prefer my disks be free of the extra recovery partitions. There are often times more things installed than are necessary which can't always be removed with %100 assurance and I don't mind the few minutes it takes to have the product installed to my liking.
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bigpinkdragon286

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Oct 3, 2012
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I would create USB installation media using the computer you plan to reinstall on, then install your M.2 drive. If you plan to leave the original drive in for normal usage, it's recommended that for the purposes of your initial installation, you disconnect / remove the drive, otherwise the Windows installer might dump the boot files on the extra drive.

The Windows 10 key is generally on a Microsoft activation server somewhere. They take a fingerprint of your hardware then activate based on that. The change from your original drive to your M.2 drive shouldn't affect activation. Not sure the specifics of OEM activation, but whether it's buried in BIOS or not, it should be transparent in regards what you need do to activate it.
 
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bigpinkdragon286

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Oct 3, 2012
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Personally, I would take a snapshot of the original drive and keep that with your, *cough*, regularly kept backups, If you know what I mean. That way, no matter what happens, you can always revert the machine to it's original factory state. Once backed up, I would personally just clean the drive for storage or whatnot.
 
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ArtPog

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Sep 17, 2014
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It's difficult for me to understand why you would NOT want to clone the contents of the HDD that's installed in the new laptop to your SSD.
Is there some downside that you envision here?

Immediately following the d-c operation it would be a good idea as bigpink... suggests to uninstall the HDD from the system and boot to the SSD as the only drive installed during that initial OS boot of the SSD. While not absolutely essential it can avoid the possibility of boot problems affecting the SSD.

There should be no licensing/activation problems following the data migration operation.

You're "profile" indicates you're an experienced PC user. Unless you have other plans for it, why don't you consider using the HDD as a recipient for the cloned contents of the SSD boot drive so that you can maintain a comprehensive backup strategy in the days, weeks, & months ahead. You probably are familiar with the various freely-available disk-cloning programs out there so you could use one of those to good advantage. At least consider it. If you do go that route there will be no need for a recovery partition either on the SSD or the destination HDD.



 
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bigpinkdragon286

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Oct 3, 2012
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Personally, I neither like nor trust original OEM installs of Windows, including signature editions of Windows, and I prefer my disks be free of the extra recovery partitions. There are often times more things installed than are necessary which can't always be removed with %100 assurance and I don't mind the few minutes it takes to have the product installed to my liking.
 
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