New SSD Advice

Hey Guys,
I received a 128GB Crucial M4 SSD for Christmas yesterday (woohoo!), and I'm looking to install it in my Malibal Lotus (the 15 inch one) which I bought in July of 2011.
I use a 1TB WD external hard drive to store music, movies, photos, and the like and use the internal 500GB hybrid drive for the OS, program files, and stuff like that. I was hoping installing the new SSD in the laptop would be as easy as copying everything from the hybrid drive to the external drive, popping in the new hard drive, booting from the external drive, and then putting the OS and certain programs onto the SSD. Needless to say, I am having some trouble.
I can't seem to get everything to copy to the external drive, and software that offers to do a perfect clone from one drive to another says it would need to erase everything on my external drive (far from ideal). At this point I'm thinking I have two options, buy some sort of caddy and take out my optical disc drive (which I barely use) and installing the SSD there. Or, I could somehow figure out a way to get a boot disc or something to allow me to do a fresh install of Windows after putting in the SSD and dealing with lost programs (which wouldn't be terribly tragic).
Thoughts?
Thanks

 

You dont want to clone the drive from a HDD to a SSD. They write to sectors differently so its not a good idea. There is software made specifically for this so if you must then use that.
You dont want the SSD in the Optical drive bay as thats a SATA II port and you want III to take advantage of the full SSD speed. You could put the existing HDD in there though and SSD in the primary bay slot then you'll be good to go.
Your best bet would be to install a fresh version of Windows onto the SSD. If you ordered Windows with your computer there should have been a disc included.

 

From the post, Im having a hard time pinpointing what the problem is.
You have an external drive, you also have a HDD in your laptop.
You obviously wanna use the new SSD you got for Christmas.
You need to clone everything on the HDD on the new SSD, in order to save time and hassle installing and setting up a fresh OS.

Do the following:
1.) buy a HDD caddy (any universal one will do).
2.) put the HDD in it
3.) put the SSD in the primary slot (SATA-3)
4.) backup everything from HDD to external HDD
5.) clone the whole the OS and programs to SSD so it fits the 128gb
6.) profit?

EDIT: Hutsady posted before me.

 

I think I'm going to get an enclosure for the hybrid drive that's in there now. Then I'll swap in the SDD, pop in a Windows boot disc and then decide which (if any) programs to move off of the hybrid onto the SSD. Although, at this point the prospect of doing a fresh Windows install on a brand new hard drive sounds, almost appealing. A good way to do a little spring cleaning. Now I just need to track down my Windows disc...
Thanks guys

 

I always prefer a clean install too. I have lots of little programs i've used once or twice and never touched again.

 

Yep, clean installs are time consuming, but on the same token, they can save you a lot of time and headache that can otherwise be met with when cloning. Enjoy your M4

 

you can download windows 7 .iso legally from microsoft and download a tool from microsoft to make a usb bootable drive. imo works better and is faster than disc. you just use the code found on the bottom of your laptop with it.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...-digitalriver-windows-7-sp1-13-languages.html
Microsoft Store Online

 

you could just make your usb bootable and copy the contents of your original install cd and copy that to your usb. well that's if you only have slow internet ! (Y)

 

He had to track down his CD is why vic posted that idea.

It can be nice to have the latest version as it saves on patches when you install

Windows 8 is designed to be installed FROM usb which is quicker which is a nice addition.

 

So I downloaded the ISO (Home Premium x64), and used the provided software to load it onto my 16 gig flash drive. That process went very smoothly (other than a slow download). But when I booted up the computer with the new hard drive installed, after Windows some did some installing and I assumed everything was fine, it then asked me for my product key. After entering the code on the bottom of my machine, I was told that this product key does not match the Windows SKU. I'm sure that I downloaded the correct ISO so I'm not sure what the problem is here. I really want to get this figured out today. Otherwise I'll have to wait three weeks until I go back to college and I can have our IT guys give me a fresh version of Windows.

 

Hey Hutsady, care to share the names of some of those tools? I will google them anyway but it would be nice to have a few recommended ones from here too.

 

It's possible you need an OEM disc, and not the retail version - which is probably what you got from the .iso.