Migrating Windows 7 to new Drive

[undr458]

Hello : )

I'm in a little bit of a predicament right now, looking for some knowledgeable answers. I recently purchased as SSD, which I am looking to transfer my copy of windows 7 over to. There is a catch, however. I purchased this copy back in 2009 as part of a student discounted upgrade from windows vista. I only purchased the code, no CD's were shipped. My account that was used to make the purchase was with my old school email, which I no longer have any access to. This prevents me from logging into my account and accessing my download history.

Is there any (free) way to transfer my OS over to my new SSD without bootable CD's? I found that microsoft has a tool that lets you create bootable USB's and CD's, but in order to use that I have to have access to my account, which is now long gone.

Thanks for your time!

 

[cadder]

You need a clone tool to clone your old drive into your new drive. There maybe be issues with this but some clone tools will handle the issues better than others. The biggest problem is alignment of the blocks (I'm not sure I'm describing it correctly). The other issue is that you need to install the SSD to use AHCI mode.

There are ways to get the activation code out of your current OS install, then you can borrow a Win7 disk to install the OS and then put your code back in.

 

[geofelt]

You might try acronis true image. They have a clone utility that will do the job.
You can get a free trial download of acronis at their web site. They hope you will like it enough to purchase the program. I did.

The result might not be aligned. Running ATTO will tell you if the result was aligned.
Getting that fixed if you need to later is possible.

 

[undr458]

I see, thanks for the info guys. I imagine that I may be able to borrow some install discs from a friend. If I can, I just install from them then put my code in.

I thought about cloning, but I didn't want to pay money + I wanted a fresh install anyways.