How the Hell to Move Win8 From HD to SSD?

[Ben]

If I want to move a Win8 image from an HDD to an SSD, and don't have media because the Win8 is manufacturer installed and the product key is in BIOS, how the hell do I do it? Win8 apparently does not come with the "system image" capability of Win7, so I can't just do an image, swap drives, and restore.

In a Google search, the best thing I came up with was found on a nerd forum (see below). Does anyone have any ideas that are better than that? The only other thing I could think to do would be to buy third party backup software like Ghost, or else what I'm almost ready to do, an OEM of Win7. Trying to avoid though, putting a bunch of dough into what's supposed to be a cheap travel laptop solution.

Noticed a few people have been having this problem (as I did) of achieving a clean install with Windows 8 on a SSD, on a pre-installed Windows 8 system. So here is how I managed to performed this operation.

The main two problems seem to be: 1) You don't get an installation disk these days. 2) You can only download the ISO file for the Windows 8 Pro version. Which is how you would of ordinarily of done a fresh install if you didn't have an installation disc.

How I got around this is by simply creating system recovery media in the form of a USB Flash drive. In my case it was HP Recovery Media but in your case it will probably be whatever manufacturer you are with. It will only let me create this media once. I used a 32GB USB Flash drive, I tried 16GB one but it wasn't big enough.

Once you have done this install your SDD into your system, insert the USB recovery media and switch your system on. It should now guide you through the process of installing Windows 8 on your SSD, depending on your manufactures recovery media. It will first copy the recovery partition to your SSD. Windows 8 should detect that it is installing onto a SSD and setup accordingly with proper alignment and automatically adjusting the likes of disk defrag.

Although this is not strictly a freh install of Windows 8, as in it will include some manufacturers bloatware it is the closest thing I could find without an installation disk or ISO file.

Your SSD should now be correctly installed.

[robear]

Try the free version of Macrium Reflect: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

It's what I used to transfer my HD to SSD under W7.   

I actually bought 2 SSDs, and run reflect once a month or so and clone the entire drive to the spare, and then run on the spare for the next month.

One you are running on your SSD, make sure the partition(s) are properly aligned:
http://lifehacker.com/5837769/make-sure-your-partitions-are-correctly-aligned-for-optimal-solid-state-drive-performance

[Hawkmoon]

Download a copy of the freeware program Belarc Advisor. Among its tools is one that scans your system and gives you a list of product keys. It doesn't pick up most lesser-known programs, but it works on Windows XP and Windows 7, so it may pick up Windows 8 as well. It's free, so all it'll cost you to try it is 10 or 15 minutes.

[AJ Dual]

It also seems as though Clonezilla will do it too, however I think you'll want to make sure the new Win 8 BIOS/product key security is turned off first, and you'll need to log into the BIOS and create your user/admin account to do that.

Then boot from a Clonezilla live CD-Rom and I think you should be good to go from there unless Win 8 will freak out when the Dev Mgr. realizes it's on a new drive, even though the ID'ing info from the rest of the PC like the CPU, chipset etc. is the same.

I don't have any Win 8 PC's to play on yet, but does it still use Windows Genuine Advantage? If so it should re-activate even if waking up in the same PC wasn't enough to keep it from tripping in the first place.

[Ben]

Already have Belarc on it. Product key won't help for this as the only "free" ISO MS offers is Win8 Pro, so I can't do a clean install with that as the OEM is standard Win8. Clean install would have been my first choice, but it appears without media, the only way I can do it is to transfer the OEM version somehow, bloatware and all, then kill off the bloatware again on the new drive.

My first thought was to clone, but I was seeing talk of issues with it in Win8. I guess I could always try it. If it fails, I'll still have a working copy on HD.

I can't believe MS bungled so bad on backup and restore. That was one of their best improvements ever under Win7.

[lee n. field]

I can't believe MS bungled so bad on backup and restore Windows 8. That was one of their best improvements ever under Win7.

(For those of us who need to actually fix Win8, it's a bundle of annoyances.)

[charby]

Whatever SSD you get, make sure the read/write speed is faster than your current HD or it won't be worth the swap.

[Ben]

I've never heard of an SSD slower than an HD. I think the slowest they make is around 200mb/s. Even then, no mechanical arm is gonna wipe the floor with a mechanical HD. I've never done a swap that wasn't ridiculously faster with the SSD.