Quick ? about reinstalling Win7 on HP desktop computer

[rcfant89]

I have an HP desktop computer that I just bought an SSD for. I made the "recovery media" disks, I'm assuming that's the OS backed up? I want to make the SSD my boot drive.

I put in the disks and unplugged the HDD and plugged in the SSD and I'm at a screen called "Recovery Manager". Do I do the "factory reset" to install the OS on this SSD?

Please let me know, thanks.

 

[rcfant89]

The factory restore key won't work because "The drive is smaller than the original one". So, since this computer didn't come with OS cd's, how do I put my OS onto this new SSD?

 

[szaboaz]

The simplest thing I can think of (apart from a fresh install with a Windows 7 installer DVD), is this:
- do a factory reset on your original hard disk (but don't forget to backup your data, then!)
- use a bootable CD/USB disk imaging software, like Norton Ghost, or Acronis True Image, to create an image of the system partition. You'll need some big ass USB pendrive to put the data on, I believe... or an USB drive... I'm not sure, maybe they can write to DVD too novadays?
- and use the same software to restore that image to the new SSD

I did something like this long ago, but I remember that restoring to a smaller partition wasn't a problem as long as the data had enough space.

 

[rcfant89]

Well the problem is that this computer did not come with OS disks. I can download a copy of "recovery disks" but I can only download them once and I already have onto DVD's. Now I can't use the dvd's on a new SSD because the SSD is smaller than the original 750gb HDD and they have a stupid limitation on it so that it has to be the same size or bigger.

I cannot download the media again onto a pendrive, it's got a 1 time download limitation and even if I could, I have the same smaller hard drive limitation. What I need is a regular OS disk but this computer didn't come with one so now what?

 

[szaboaz]

I'm afraid you didn't quite understand the idea I proposed. Use your recovery disks on the 750 GB HDD. Then use another image maker software, which allows restoring to a smaller partition. So you'll create a new image of the freshly restored system partition, and you restore that new image on the SSD, got it?

But you can download regular OS disks from official sources too... I have some notes about it, I'll send them in PM right away.
But you'll need your key to activate it, of course.