Moving dv6t to SSD

Hi, I just purchased my dv6t quad edition (should be 61xx) and I plan on installing an SSD in it when it is delivered.

I would like to be able to put the SSD in and set everything up without having to even turn on the computer with the HDD in it or at least do very little on it while the HDD is installed.

I would also like to uninstall the bloatware that comes with it because of the size limitations with the SSD.

It seems the easiest thing to do would be to...
1. Burn recovery discs
2. Put recovery thing on a flash drive (To make the installation faster)
3. Remove HDD and install SSD
4. Install OS via recovery discs doing a Minimal System Installation.

So, my questions are:
Would this work?

Would I have the recovery partition on the SSD?

And finally, can I put the recovery thing on a flash drive? And if so how big of a flash drive would be required to fit the recovery thing on a flash drive? I plan on getting a 16 GB but it ends up being 14.4 GB (because 1024MB vs 1000MB yadda yadda yadda) so would it fit?


Thank you in advance!

 

i installed windows onto a ssd when mine arrived. this is what i did:

-booted up laptop and created recovery discs and saved the SWSetup folder to a flash drive

-installed the SSD in the secondary slot (keep in mind, you'll need to buy the cable seperately from the laptop. you can get it from newmode.us or from hp.com)

-put a windows 7 install disc i made and installed windows (windows sticker is on the bottom of the laptop)

-installed the drivers i wanted from the SWSetup folder

your method would work the same way except it would just have all the drivers (probably a lot easier >.<)

but you will need 2nd HDD Cable kit for HP dv7t-6000, dv7-6000 series,dv7qte [HP-dv7t-6000] - $28.95 : NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks

also that flash drive is big enough for the recovery thing

 

I got the dv6, not dv7, so there's only 1 drive bay if I'm not mistaken.
I wanted the dv7 in order to have an SSD and HDD, but 17" is too big for a college laptop that would be hauled to classes 2h every few weeks.

But on topic: do the recovery discs install swsetup?
And are you sure the recovery discs would reinstall the whole OS?
I would guess it would but I could be mistaken.

Maybe it would be easier to buy a USB 3.0/Data dock instead of the flash drive and recover to the SSD?

 

well they're called "recovery disks" so i imagine they do exactly that and they will install the swsetup folder, but the drivers in them will already be installed

 

Im not 100% sure if the recovery disks save the swsetup so I would back it up on a drive. But once you have your ssd in, put in the recovery disks and if it did not save swsetup at least you will have a copy and then can do the minimal system install. Might have to install os first with recovery disks to do it. Good luck !

 

Just FYI, it's kind of pointless to use usb 3.0 flash drives for recovery media, because they require drivers (I think native support of usb 3.0 is coming with Ivy Bridge). This means you can't boot a usb 3.0 flash drive from an usb 3.0 port, so you lose the speed benefit. Save yourself the money and go with a usb 2.0 flash drive!

 

I used clonezilla (liveCD) many times, and it works great with Windows 7 (32/64). Basically, just attach the new drive to the computer via SATA-USB adapter, and boot from Clonezilla CD/USB key, follow the instruction, and it'll clone around 500GB in less than one hour. You can then swap the drives, Windows will boot directly from the new drive, no need to back anything up, or reinstall Windows, restore image.

 

Got a dv6tqe yesterday. Last night I made the recovery discs, copied the SW folder to a flash drive, upgraded the RAM, removed the 750GB HDD, put the 750GB HDD into a USB 3.0 enclosure, installed an Intel 510 120GB SSD, ran the minimal recovery install from the discs and viola!

System recovery to another drive does not install a recovery partition...

 

How about SWSetup?
I'm pretty sure it's just a file in C:

 

It is in the root directory of the factory drive.