Adding SSD to brand new laptop

wesellboxes

Honorable
Dec 14, 2013
2
0
10,510
New here so not sure where it should go, sorry if its in the wrong place.

I have just purchased a new Lenovo Z500 which comes with Windows 8 pre-installed on a 1tb hard drive. I have a 128gb SSD and a optical bay caddy that I want to install into the machine which I will have no problems doing.

What I would like to do is move the factory hard drive into the caddy and use the SSD as my primary drive.

My concern in installing Windows 8 onto the SSD without a product key as it is pre-installed onto the machine. I haven't even opened the box for this yet, but will I have any problems with the activation process and how do I go about getting W8 onto the SSD without a retail CD?

Thanks in advace
 

wesellboxes

Honorable
Dec 14, 2013
2
0
10,510


Thanks, I have tried using my key to download an ISO but its displaying "this product key cannot be used on a retail copy of Windows 8"

Could I possible "mirror" the HDD onto the SSD and go from there? How would I go about doing this?
 

RealBeast

Distinguished
Moderator
Sure, I clone drives all the time -- yesterday cloned an old 80GB Intel SSD to a nice new 250GB Samsung, but I never do any factory restore partitions.

I use Norton Ghost 15, but many programs work, including EaseUS Todo, True IMage, and Clonezilla to name a few.

You biggest issue not having an install disk is that you will want the recovery partition in addition to the SRP and C drive.

Before you start, make or buy a full set of Lenovo recovery disks and make a system repair disc (there is a wizard for that if you type it in the program search box for that repair disk, it comes in handy when changing disks).

This is a bit more tricky that Windows 7 since there is an additional ~15GB Lenovo restore file, plus the 200MB system reserve partition (SRP) and then whatever size the C drive.