Home premium on a professional hard drive

[cb250rs]

Hello,
I have a brand new from the factory hard drive with windows 7 professional installed on it. I don't have a licence for professional so I want to use it with home premium(which I have a disk and product key for). Is the windows 7 home premium embedded within the software? So if I put my home premium product key in it would only activate the windows home premium part? Or do I need to wipe and format it?
I am NOT looking for help to get the home premium for free dishonestly - I just want to be able to use this new hard drive.
Any help appreciated.

 

[cmichael138]

Key is tied to the W7 Premium OS. You will need to format and install W7 Home.

 

[overclockingrocks]

you need to wipe and reinstall from scratch. Only way you could use your HP key is if you were on Win 7 basic then you could perform an in place upgrade. In your case from a software standpoing going from Pro to HP is considered a downgrade and not supported with a direct in place install like you'd want.

 

[cb250rs]

Thank you - so for the wipe could anybody suggest a basic wipe?
There is absolutely no personal information of mine on the drive ( I haven't even plugged it in yet)
I don't need to do a 27hr security wipe!
thanks

 

[DarkSable]

... try formatting it as you install windows? XP