I have 5 retail Win7 licenses that I paid for & still use.. I have had a number of boot hard drives die in the last year and I needed more space on a couple so I installed bigger drives (mostly for dual booting Linux Mint). All my boot drives are just that - boot OS only. 80GB to 160GB in size. Each computer has a 2nd drive for DATA, all drivers, and a copy of all the install apps with keys in a text file. When the drive failed I jut grabed a spare from my stock and re-install Win 7. I use the same key for the computer. In the last 6 months I have had Win7 activated on-line for one computer and I had to do the phone call & smart phone activation forthree others. I don't know why they all were not activated the same.
A Caution when Activating Win 7 by Phone:
The first time I did the smart phone activation, MS asked how many computers were using the key. I replied "one" and was then told I had exceeded my limit for my key and they closed the session. The computer that I was activating was the only one using the key - that's why I responded "one".
I called back and did the activation again and when the I was asked again how many computers were using the key I responded with "zero" and MS completed the activation fine. Logically it made no sense as I had to put the key into the computer before I could call MS and at the time that I was asked how many, the answer has to be at least one - how else could I generate the numbers that they wanted? I guess what they meant to ask was "how many computers are using this key not counting the one that is being activated?"
I have tried making back up drive images in the past but for me it is just easier to do a clean fresh install. Yes, phone activation is a pain but I have gotten good at it. I should mention that the Win7 computers are not daily drivers - they are used for very specific tasks - ham radio, music creation, ect and they have apps that are working just fine. While most could run Win10, I prefer 7.
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