HDD Switch: Putting Laptop HDD into my new desktop

[AbuBatikha]

HI, I just built a new system and installed a 256GB Samsung 840 SSD. I bought a new SSD for my laptop as well, with the intention of using my 1TB HDD in my desktop so I don't have to transfer over new files. Now my question is, is there are way to delete windows from my HDD, install the HDD into my desktop, then install windows onto the new SSD in my laptop without having to purchase a new copy of Windows 8.1 for my laptop? If so, how would I do it? I'm sorry if I don't make sense, I am not really sure how to word my plans

[VMaxMuffin]

What you want to do is certainly possible

 

Firstly, putting the new SSD into the laptop: the easiest thing to do would be to clone the current drive to your new SSD and install it into your laptop, which would not require a reinstall of Windows. Basically, to do this you need to delete/move everything you don't want off the 1TB HDD (so that only the amount of data that will fit on the SSD remains), then clone the drive using software such as EaseUS Todo Backup or other free cloners available. This will require a SATA to USB adapter, which can be bought inexpensively. Alternatively, if you want to start fresh, then you can make a bootable Windows 8.1 USB (you can find out how to do this easily), and install onto the new SSD. Depending on your laptop, the product key may be embedded into the UEFI BIOS, but first I would recommend using a product key finder such as ProduKey to find and record your key.

 

Secondly, putting the Laptop HDD in the desktop: Basically, just put it in, connect it up and reformat it with Disk Management (built into Windows) as NTFS. This will effectively erase the drive (although if you prefer to actually remove the data, then you will want to do a secure erase -

).

[AbuBatikha]

Thank you. What I ended up doing was just swapping my hard drive out for my ssd in my laptop, installing Windows 7 via disc I found under a pile of boxes, updating to 8 using the key I had from ProduKey, then doing the free update to 8.1. I decided not to wipe my HDD but instead just delete all the unnecessary files I could find as I wanted a mostly fresh start on my laptop, and all my old games on my desktop without having to spend a day downloading them