Transfer all data to new HDD

Actually you should be able to do a clean install. The one use version is actually for use on one motherboard/CPU and since those are staying the same the activation number will work fine.

If you just want to copy from one hard drive to the other you need something like Acronis or Norton Ghost. Here is a pretty good comparison of that type software.

http://disk-imaging-software-review.toptenreviews.com/

So you're saying if I just take out my old HDD and put the new one in with Windows 7 CD in the disk drive, I can just do a clean install and it wont say windows key invalid?

If so, how would I go about moving all my data to the new HDD from the old one without the two competing to boot from the OP on each?

No no no, you simply want to clone or mirror the image from your old drive to the new drive. Acronis will do this quickly, and neatly. Just download the program, and run it, following the step by step instructions and in a few minutes you will have an exact working copy of your old drive on your new drive, your PC will be booting to it, and your old drive will simply become drive D. Acronis will change the bootmanger of the drive so the new drive will be the bootable one, and the old drive will just be a secondary drive, but all the information otherwise will still be there on it too. You don't have to reactivate anything, you don't have to reinstall anything, everything will be just as it was, only on the larger drive.

^ This.


I was just saying your Windows license would probably work if you wanted to do a clean install since you did not think it would.

Thing is though guys, the reason Im doing this is because I want to put my old 250GB HDD into a different system and keep the 500GB HDD for my current system.

Acronis costs £40 (the trial version does not support drive cloning). For that amount of money I may as well just buy another HDD for my other system and keep 750GB in my new one.

Is there any other way?

There will be drive cloning software on the web site of the vendor you bought the drive from. You can always simply format the old drive after you clone it, before you remove it from your system. You cannot run the Windows install on another machine, unless you have a version that supports multiple licensing, for 1 thing, its illegal, and for the another, the second version will not activate, and third, you likely won't get it to even boot on the second machine. Please tell us this is not what you are trying to accomplish?

Try this.

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name...

No of course not. I wanted to simply MOVE - not COPY - my operating system from one hard drive to another. So I still only have one copy, but it is in a different place.

The hard drive with Windows 7 will remain in current PC, the old completely empty HDD will be put into a different PC.


I have now accomplished this by intsalling the new HDD, copying all my data to the new HDD (except the OP data), removing the old HDD and running a lean install of Windows 7 from the disk onto the new HDD.