How to upgrade to windows 8 on a new SSD?

[stealth_nat]

I currently have windows 7 installed on my laptop's hard drive. I am removing my optical drive and adding an SSD in replace of it. I want to make my SSD my main drive and upgrade windows 7 to windows 8 and install it on my SSD, so it boots from my SSD. How exactly would I go upon doing this? Would I need to clean install windows 8 and use a bootable usb drive?

 

[Brett928S2]

Hi

I wouldn't YET as most 8 drivers from laptop manufacturers have NOT been written yet....

All the best Brett

 

[dodger46]

Usual way is to replace your HDD with the SSD and put the HDD into the Optical Drive bay with an adapter. You can then get an adapter lead to connect your Optical drive via USB... Search Ebay for 2nd drive adapter for your make of laptop... As for the installation make sure you get a disk and clean install on to your SSD. I've already installed 8 on several laptops with no driver difficulties...albeit the Evaluation copy up till now...

 

[iceroadman]

I just upgraded my daughters Compaq Presario with a OCZ 480GB SSD and installed Windows 8 Pro on it with Windows upgrades and anti-virus in a couple of hours with no problems at all. One thing about Windows 8, I first installed it on my desktop on the same SSD that I put in the laptop but decided I didn't want 8 anymore and put everything back to the way it was then installed the SSD in the laptop but couldn't register Win 8 until I bought a new license. It obviously knew it wasn't on the same computer even though it was on the same SSD. I could have gone through the probable painful exercise of calling tech support and having it changed to the laptop but it was easier to just pay the 80 bucks for a new license.
There is a bit of a learning curve with using Win 8 and I probably didn't give it enough of a try but have since learned a bunch of tricks on how to use it. For somebody that hasn't been using DOS and Windows for 20 years it probably would have been less of an impact on the user experience. Maybe I'll give it a try later sometime.

 

[stealth_nat]

Best answer selected by stealth_nat.