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Improve Disk Performance : DELL Inspiron 7737
My three year old Inspiron 7737 running Windows10 Home has ground to a halt mainly because of 50-100% ST1000LM014-1EJ164 disk utilisation. I was thinking about replacing this disk with a 500GB SSD however I do not have my original Windows8 media and associated license key (and this would need to be upgraded to Windows10 which I achieved free of charge). I currently have 643GB free of 913GB so this would be feasible if this could be achieved ideally without the need to purchase a Microsoft license and installing from scratch.
Is there a cost effective way of speeding up my laptop using my current licensed Windows10 OS?
Thanks in anticipation.
jphughan
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October 28th, 2017 20:00
1) Your Windows 8 key would be embedded into your BIOS, so you wouldn't need it if you wanted to reinstall Windows 8. But you don't even have to do that because....
2) When you upgraded to Windows 10, your system would have received a "digital entitlement" license. Basically, Microsoft's activation servers have recorded that your system has a Windows 10 Home license, so you could perform a clean install of Windows 10 at any time and your system would activate just fine. You'll never need a product key for that.
3) If you still want to avoid doing a clean install, use a tool like Macrium Reflect Free to capture an image of your system and restore it onto the SSD. Or even better, buy a SATA to USB 3.0 adapter so you can connect your SSD temporarily that way, then do a direct clone of your existing drive onto the SSD, which Macrium Reflect Free can also do. Then shut the system down, install the SSD internally, and you're good to go.