Upgrade HDD?

[Exospeed]

I'll start off by saying I'm fairly tech savy when it comes to hardware and older versions of windows.
I have built many PC's from scratch and installed Windows operating systems etc. but nothing newer than XP.

Last year I bought a refurbished Dell PC tower for my daughter. It was dirt cheap from best buy ($120 on sale) and at the time had everything I was looking for. The PC came with Win7 installed on it so its a new OS to me.

The shortfall of the PC I bought was that it only has a 250GB HDD. I wanted to upgrade it to 500GB or 1TB since my daughter has already filled the 250GB with games and pictures.

Is there any way to do this without a windows 7 disk?
The only thing I got with the PC was the activation code for win7.

One thing to note is that I do not use any clouds or online data storage nor will I. I use external HDD's for all my backing up needs, call me paranoid but I don't think clouds are safe, and I had a co-worker suggest I upload stuff to a cloud when I asked him about this.

With XP it was no problem as I have the disks for all our other PCs and could do a fresh install.
I thought of getting XP drivers and converting it to XP but that would be kinda pointless.

Thanks for any help.

[croc4]

can't you download windows 7 from MS? and then use your activation code? or even download it from dell's sight

[croc4]

oh, and I were you, get a SSD as the primary boot drive and use the 500MB drive as a data drive

[Exospeed]

I never knew you could DL an OS from MS or Dell. I'll have to check into that.

[Combo]

You can install the new hard drive and clone the old hard drive on to it and at the same time expand the 250GB partition to 500GB, no need to reinstall the operating system.

you can follow a disk cloning guide like this http://www.howtogeek.com/199068/how-...under-an-hour/


An alternative is to just add on the 500GB hard drive and set it up so that for example the Pictures/Videos directory gets stored on the new hard drive which is easy to do. you can right click the 'Pictures' folder and select the 'Change location tab'

Also on this page you can order replacement Discs for your operating system
Guide; http://www.dell.com/support/article/...t-you'-ll-need
order; https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/media

[skuehl]

You can. Download it and make sure you get the activation code or serial number from the previous version. Quite often it won't work but at that point you can call into MS and let them know what your doing and that you are transferring the OS from one hard drive to a new one. I did this with MS OS and MS Office and they allowed both. I can't remember how. If they did it in their system and then the software authenticated or if they gave me new codes. If I remember correctly they did it internally. When I was trying to activate the software it didn't work and after they made the change it did.

[high_revs]

i've not downloaded it. but on my 2 dells, i just called support and ask them to send me the original OS only cd. then i just download the drivers.

i had to do that for my laptop when i installed a msata ssd and the dbar (dell backup and recovery) doesn't allow that setup.

you can try to just take an image and restore to the new and larger drive. i use trueimage home v11 and that still work on win7, but not working on my win8.1 so i reinstalled dbar from scratch on a new ssd.

p.s. if you can swing it, get the ssd also.

[ElDub1950]

Cloning it is by far the easiest. There are free clone utilities. If you decide on a Seagate drive their utility works fine.

You can install the new hard drive and clone the old hard drive on to it and at the same time expand the 250GB partition to 500GB, no need to reinstall the operating system.

you can follow a disk cloning guide like this http://www.howtogeek.com/199068/how-...under-an-hour/


An alternative is to just add on the 500GB hard drive and set it up so that for example the Pictures/Videos directory gets stored on the new hard drive which is easy to do. you can right click the 'Pictures' folder and select the 'Change location tab'

Also on this page you can order replacement Discs for your operating system
Guide; http://www.dell.com/support/article/...t-you'-ll-need
order; https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/media

[stilly]

I have to go with everyone else. I have used Macrium Reflect with success in the past when it came to cloning drives. Acronis used to be my GOTO but it failed around Sata and has not been the same since so I migrated to Macrium Reflect for free. It did a good job. It should clone your disk for you.

And yes, if you can, certainly add an SSD.

Shhhhh. Do not tell anyone but if you DO not want to clone and you just want to wipe it all out then download an image of your OS from Microsoft. Or get the ones that came with the computer. I tend to have images all over the place. Mostly Linux but I have several techie images. One of which is a 48 in 1 windows 7 disk. Yeah, 48 versions... Crazy :\

Anyways, if you download a disk called HIREN'S BOOT CD version 15.2 reloaded you can burn it to disk and then pop the disk in and use the license crawler to reveal your keys and print them out for your software and windows. Nirsoft also has similar programs/utils. Then once you get your install disks for your OS you can wipe it out and reinstall onto a newer drive, OR just install it onto the SSD and keep your 250GB drive as an additional drive.

Hmmm. I guess you could also just look at the oem sticker too...

[the86d]

For the OS, if proprietary hardware (dell, etc.) ever dies and you have to replace it with industry standard board, you cannot use recovery DVDs, but CAN do an install as long as you have a key. For Windows discs, if you need one: http://www.pricewatch.com/search?q=w...w&discounted=2

SSD for main drive, platter drive for storage of all the kid-junk. Everyone I know with iTunes had 2 copies of audio. One in industry standard format, and one in the converted iTunes format, but I don't know if that is the case anymore, but I don't use iPhruity hardware so I don't know.