Installing SSD on ASUS laptop

[soulweeper]

Sure hope I posted this in the right section.

I have an ASUS A53E-ES92 laptop that I bought primarily for my WildBlue satellite installations. It rides in the truck a lot, in a padded case, but it still gets moved around a lot. For that reason, and the faster boot up, I'm considering installing an SSD.

I just built my first computer about 8 months ago, and it went well, so I know this shouldn't be too hard, but I'm by no means an expert, so want to double check on the difficulty, or not, of this.

I'm assuming I can simply remove the back, and it will be self explanatory, and I can simply swap the current HDD for the SSD of my choice(probably Intel).

The question I have is...am I better off installing a fresh copy of Windows 7, or making an image of my current operating system? What I'm concerned about is the fact that this laptop came loaded with Windows 7, and no backup disc.....it had me make my own backup that consisted of 4 discs. So would my license key work with a fresh copy of Windows, and if not, would a simple call to Microsoft telling them I switched hard drives do the trick?


Any advice/feedback greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

 

[JohnnyLucky]

Removing a hard disk drive from a laptop and replacing it with a solid state drive is pretty straight forward. It is an easy swap. I've done it several times.

A clean install of Microsoft Windows 7 is the preferred method. There is another option. You might be able to use a software utility to clone the hard drive to the ssd. Some retail versions of ssd's include the cloning software. You have to check the ssd details to see what is included.

Microsoft's policy is a little confusing. Did a Microsoft Windows 7 installation disc come with your laptop?

 

[JohnnyLucky]

OOPS - double post 🙁

 

[soulweeper]

Did a Microsoft Windows 7 installation disc come with your laptop?

No it didn't.

The first thing the laptop has you do is make a backup, which took 4 DVD's I believe. It does have some crap on it I don't care about, so installing a fresh copy of Windows would be cool, but my concern would be using the license key that came with the laptop.