Transfer Windows 8 OS from HDD to SSD

[jackclangston]

I recently purchased a factory built computer that had everything that I was looking for in it besides an SSD. I bought a 120gb SSD separate and planned to hook it up and do simple transfer of the windows 8 OS that came with the manufacture's HDD onto the SSD by cloning the drive.

Here is the problem that I ran into. The physical sector sizes of the HDD and the SSD are different and as such I cannot clone the drive using any of the software packages that I could find. So after giving up on that possibility, I decided to try to just to do a brand new installation of windows 8 onto the SSD. However, the PC did not come with an install disk or activation code for the current installation. I ended up finding the activation code using a software analyzer, but because those were the "manufacturer" code's used to create the default installation instead of a personal key, the Windows 8 downloader would not let me download the install files.

Essentially, all I want to do is move the current OS that's on the HDD to the SSD. This seems like a straightforward enough request, and I was surprised that I could not find anybody who has had an solved a situation like mine before.

Is there anyone who knows a definitive solution to this issue? Your help would be much appreciated.

 

[scoobydenon]

Do a full back-up on a thumb drive, then boot from it, unhook the HDD and put in the SSD and copy the files from the thumb drive to the SSD.

 

[jackclangston]

Do a full back-up on a thumb drive, then boot from it, unhook the HDD and put in the SSD and copy the files from the thumb drive to the SSD.

If I can hook them both into the motherboard at the same time, would I even need the thumb drive? If I just dumpy create a back up on the SSD, I can boot straight from the back up without needing a system repair drive or activation codes or anything special?