Does cloning a hard drive transfer the os as well?

[Krasher100]

My hard drive has been having problems recently and as I didnt know they where signs of my hard drive dieing. Well it did exactly that. I had brought another hard drive thinking that it would have stopped the problem s before it died but that didnt work. So now I have an empty hard drive brand new. The thing is that I dont have an os that I can use on it but I do have another computer. I was wondering if I cloned the hard drive will it trasfer the os alone with it or will it not work or be glitchy. The os on the other pc is windows 7. Everywhere I look it is giving mixed answers. Thanks in advanced.

 

[xXCrossfireXx]

My hard drive has been having problems recently and as I didnt know they where signs of my hard drive dieing. Well it did exactly that. I had brought another hard drive thinking that it would have stopped the problem s before it died but that didnt work. So now I have an empty hard drive brand new. The thing is that I dont have an os that I can use on it but I do have another computer. I was wondering if I cloned the hard drive will it trasfer the os alone with it or will it not work or be glitchy. The os on the other pc is windows 7. Everywhere I look it is giving mixed answers. Thanks in advanced.

You shouldn't have any problems doing it, and even if I'm wrong and you do, they won't cause anything that'll make your computer break

 

[yoji]

Well - you can clone it.. with the OS - but that's a pirate copy if you use it on a different PC .. and it probably wont boot with a different motherboard anyway.
So why cant you reinstall the OS from the dead HDD? you only need the OS key and you can then reinstall? do you have your OS key? what OS/version was it?
Cheers

 

[jsmithepa]

Everywhere I look it is giving mixed answers

Then test the answers by yourself, try what people say will work, if it does great, if it doesn't then you know, won't blow up the machine or set it on fire or anything like that, it just won't boot, or boots with error messages.

The world is full of ambiguity and are you going to freeze for how long waiting for the precise answer?

 

[USAFRet]

My hard drive has been having problems recently and as I didnt know they where signs of my hard drive dieing. Well it did exactly that. I had brought another hard drive thinking that it would have stopped the problem s before it died but that didnt work. So now I have an empty hard drive brand new. The thing is that I dont have an os that I can use on it but I do have another computer. I was wondering if I cloned the hard drive will it trasfer the os alone with it or will it not work or be glitchy. The os on the other pc is windows 7. Everywhere I look it is giving mixed answers. Thanks in advanced.

You can't move that system from the old PC to the new PC, for a couple of reasons. Operation and Licensing

Operation - Cloning from the previous Win 7 PC to that new hard drive, is exactly the same as moving the physical drive to the new PC.
It almost certainly will not boot.

Licensing - You have 1 license. You can't use that on 2 PC's.
And, if the original one is an OEM license, you can't use that on a different motherboard, at all.

So, your drive died. The OS that was on it...where did it come from? Just reinstall that.

 

[Krasher100]

Will I be able to reinstall the os if it came with the computer? How would I find the os key?

 

[USAFRet]

Will I be able to reinstall the os if it came with the computer? How would I find the os key?

What OS is it? Preinstalled, or something you bought and installed?
If it still ran, you could extract the key with Belarc Advisor.

 

[nukemaster]

Windows 7 systems should have a COA sticker on the system. It is normally on the back or top of the case.

You can freely download an ISO for Windows 7 SP1 and install it using the your COA key. You WILL have to get all your drivers again(most of the time they are on the PC makers website). Video card drivers if you have a dedicated card should be downloaded from the chip makers website(AMD(ATI)/Nvidia/Matrox/ect).

https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/software-download/windows7

If the old drive is still able to boot and working well enough to clone you can go that route. You may want to clone in from another system so you do not have to install more software on it. Please remember when cloning you will want to take the System Reserved partition as well(most software will do this for you) because it is required to boot the system after.
I personally recommend Reflect by Macrium(they have a free version with the features you will need)
http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx