Putting A New Ssd In Laptop Without Os Disc

As the OS was already installed onto a partition when I bought my Acer laptop I wonder if there is a way to swap the HDD for a SSD and not have to buy a new version of Windows 7 by somehow cloning the OS to a thumbdrive and using that. Would it work?

 

If you purchase a Samsung ssd, it includes the software to clone your current hd to the new ssd; it's called Data Migration.
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/support-software/Data-Migration-with-Samsung-SSDs-699/

 

Further to plodr's suggestion you will need a sata to usb connector and depending on the size of the SSD you might have to resize the drives partitions.
s.

 

Unless the Acer has a decent spec don't expect miracles. I did the same with my Thinkpad E335 but it still takes nearly a minute to get to a working desktop and I lost a significant amount of disk capacity as I couldn't justify the cost at the time of a 500GB SSD. I was expecting boot times around 20-30 seconds as with my PC. Waste of money.

 

I meant to add that if you don't want a Samsung, but do already have a plug-in external hard drive, it is easy to image your OS partition to SSD using free and proven software. That's how I did it and no problems at all.

 

I gave up the idea of installing an ssd in either of our two Acer netbooks. The hd isn't the slowest thing. On my hubby's it is the CPU and on mine the graphics. An ssd replacement wouldn't fix either of those issues.

 

I already have a 250 ssd so may as well give it a try. It is a Kingston so I will follow Earthling advice and use an external hard drive. If it doesn't make any difference I will rip it out and go back to the old drive. I can put the SSD into my PC as another drive. Thanks for all your advice, never failed yet!!