Windows 10: Activating Windows on a new Hard Drive Disk

Recently, my computer stopped booting and I found out the HDD was busted. I got a new (blank) one and I'm gonna be installing win10 on it, but I'm worried about activating it. Will I have to buy it? I doubt I can find my original key (my computer came with windows on it from factory), since I can't access the busted HDD.


I did make a backup of Windows, is it possible that by restoring that it'll be activated?


thank you.

:)

 

How to Partiton a Hard Drive in Vista

This is a way to get Vista to see another hard drive that is not associated with the OS. There is some times when your new hdd doesn't seem to want to work well with Vista. But, there is a solution in it.

Open the Computer Management By doing these steps.

• Click on the Start Button
• Click on Control Panel
• Click Administrative Tools
• Double click on Computer Management

You are now in the Navigation panel of the Computer Management.
When in Computer Management, you then have to allow the new drive to be recognized.

• Double click on Storage
• Double click on Disk Management

Now in the middle of your screen there is the layout of the Disk Drives that you have. The drives that are partitioned will show by the drive lettering. The others will just show up as having nothing at all in them. Below that there will be the Disk drives that are installed into the computer. You'll see that the primary one will all ways read as "Disk 0". Then you will have Disk 1 and so on. Under the Disks there will also see your CD-Rom drives.. If there is more then one, it will be labeled the same as Disk drives..

On to the Partitioning of the drive in question.

• Right Click on the drive
• Click to format the drive or Enable Volume. There will be a series of windows that open up. This is Vista's formatting. Just go threw the windows, and make sure everything is the way you want it to happen.
• Once the formatting is done, will take some time depending on the drive size.
• Right click on the drive
• Click on Mark the Partition as Active

After you have done those steps, The drive will be up and running threw Vista.



:Side Notes:
If you are not the Administer to the Os, then you will have to enable it..
You may also want to redo the drive lettering of it all. But, I really don't see a reason to do so. If you do, you have to redo drive paths and so forth.. A lot of work on something so small...

 

Install Windows 10 on new hard drive.

Hi Arzlo,

Thank you for being a part of Windows 10.

I appreciate you for providing details about the issue and we are happy to help you.

Please be informed that you cannot install the activated Windows 10 on to the new hard disk.

If you are replacing the hard disk then you may get Windows 10 activation errors.

If you are purchasing a new hard disk then, you may have to install genuine Windows 7 (SP1)/8.1 to upgrade to Windows 10 to get Windows 10 activated.

I suggest you to run check disk on the hard drive to see if there are any corruptions.

Follow the below steps:

• Windows key + X, click Command Prompt (Admin).
• Command Prompt, type the following command, and then press
  ENTER:

chkdsk /f

Disclaimer: While performing check disk on the hard drive, if any bad sectors are found then check disk will try to repair that sector. Any data available on a bad sector might be lost.

Once Check Disk completes, boot the computer and then check.

Reference: Refer to the following Microsoft article on Windows 10 Q&A.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-faq?ppud=4

Kindly let us know if you need any further assistance with Windows. We are glad to assist you.

Thank you.

 

W7 Hard drive partition issue

to get rid of that 100 meg windows partition that setup creates for you on a new install on a blank hdd:

- press shift+f10 when on the partition management screen in setup <-- this opens a command prompt
- diskpart <-- start the windows command line partition management tool
- list disk <--- list the installed hdds in this computer for the next step
- select disk 0 <- might have to replace 0 with the number of the correct disk
- clean <-- this will erase all data on the disk you selected one step up- dont use the wrong disk!
- create partition primary <- creates a primary partition taking up all space on the drive, adjust the command if necessary
- exit, exit to exit diskpart and the command prompt
- click refresh in partition manager and select your newly created partition and install to that