OS after replacing HDD

[SCMsamson]

I was recently gifted a G62 notebook with a dead hdd by a friend who didn't feel it was worth the cost to repair. I figure I can put a ssd in it and it will be a pretty decent laptop.  My problem involves the operating system after I do this. I have my own copy of Windows 7 (64-bit) but I've read that the key for the original version on the dead hard drive is also on the bios to make installation quicker. And if you install a different version it can cause problems with certain versions of windows in certain laptops. My question is can I just use my copy of windows 7 or do I have to go through the trouble of using the laptops key to burn another copy from the windows website. Possible dumb question but I wanna figure everything out before i start this project.

[DavidPK · Accepted solution]

Hi,

This machine originally shipped with Windows 7, so you'll be fine - digital product key injection began with Windows 8 - just install Windows 7 and enter your product key in the usual way.

If needed, original software and drivers are available on the following link.

http://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/HP-G62-100-Notebook-PC-series/4078809/model/4164687

Regards,

DP-K

[Captain_WD]

Hi there 🙂 Welcome to the community! 

As David pointed out, you should have issues with the Windows 7 installation and you should be able to use your copy of the OS with your key (if the licence allows it to be installed on different computers). 

A couple of suggestions from me:

- Check if the SATA port for the storage is a SATAI or SATAII since if it's SATAII the SSD will be bottlenecked to 150MB/s and you won't notice much of a difference between running your system off a SSD or off a HDD and the additional cost per GB might not be worth it. If it's a SATAII you will have your SSD running at 300MB/s and you will see a good improvement over running it from a HDD.

- You can swap the optical drive with a HDD caddy and add a HDD for more storage and simply use a small SSD as a boot drive (thus lowering the cost of the upgrade). 

- You may also consider a SSHD for the laptop as a middle -ground between good performance and capacity. Let me know if you need more info on that.

Post back if you have any questions 🙂

Captain_WD.

[SCMsamson]

Thank you Dave and captain for the advice, and the drivers, which were a big help. I went with a crucial mx300 275gb ssd if anyone is curious which is a good ssd and fairly cheap at around $70 in case there were any other problems with the laptop. 

To avoid using the same OS on two different computers I actually used the windows product key on the bottom of the laptop with the retail disk I already owned, which I didn't know was a thing. I assumed, in my limited knowlege, that the product keys are tied to the specific disk, but they arn't. Word of warning to anyone else that may have this very specific problem and want to try this, you NEED the same version of windows that was previously installed on the laptop. A quick check of the specs for my laptop said that it came with windows 7 home premium pre-installed on it and i had the retail version of windows 7 home premium. Also don't know if this works with any other version of windows like 8 or 10, so I would do some research before trying.

Anyways, thanks again for the help. Saved me a lot of aggrivation.

[Captain_WD]

Thanks for sharing! I'm glad to see you've resolved it and that everything works fine now. 

I'm sure other people with similar problems will be happy to see this! 

Make sure features such as TLER are enabled and that the SSD isn't susceptible to defragging so you don't have its performance and life span degraded. 

Captain_WD.