How to install new hard drive

[Tessakeh]

First off, I know nothing about computers so sorry if I sound ignorant.

My hard drive failed (hard drive short dst failed), and no shops were able to fix it within the next two weeks. So, I bought an enclosure and placed my hard drive in it. This now works, however my laptop is without an internal hard drive.

As far as I've read it's possible to run the laptop off the external, but it's slow. I want to buy a new internal hard drive (sshd), however how would I go about installing Windows on this?

I assume there's a copy of Windows on my (now) external hard drive as my laptop came with it installed. Can I copy this over? Or do I need an installation CD.

Sorry for any stupid obvious questions - my searches have come up pretty empty.

Thanks

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Welcome to Tom's Hardware, @Tessakeh!

Regarding the physical installation and setup of your new SSHD, you need to follow the instructions from your laptop's manual. It will show you how to connect your new drive in the HDD bay of your laptop.
In order to get the Windows OS installed you need to create a bootable flash drive with the OS version that was previously installed on the laptop. Once the OS is up and running it should automatically activate when you go online. If it's an OEM version, contact your laptop manufacturer's customer support if you can't find your recovery OS CD.
The operating system cannot be copied over from an external HDD. It needs to be installed, you can follow this Windows tutorial if you need a detailed step-by-step.

P.S. Make sure you always keep a copy (backups) somewhere off-site. Having duplicates of your files is the best way to avoid any potential data loss.

Let me know if there's anything unclear. Hope this helps you!
SuperSoph_WD