I have a Dell Inspiron 15 laptop that came with Windows 8 64 bit (I updated to 8.1) installed. I want to upgrade to Windows 8.1 Professional 64 bit, but on a brand new drive. I purchased the drive, and what I thought was a 8.1 Professional install license, but it came as a upgrade license. I am currently checking to see if I can get it exchanged, but I'd like to have options. Would it be possible to make an image of my old hard drive, put that image on the new hard drive, then upgrade the new drive? How exactly would I do this? What is the best software for doing such a task? I have USB ports and a DVD rom.
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Windows 8.1 Professional 64 bit new install
- Thread starter vb2012codeman
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Hi @vb2012codeman and welcome to PCHF 
You can make a clone using Acronis True Image. The trick about cloning is making sure the destination drive is the same size or bigger. If it's smaller it'll fail.
You can make a clone using Acronis True Image. The trick about cloning is making sure the destination drive is the same size or bigger. If it's smaller it'll fail.
If you clone the old drive you have all the rubbish with it and should there be any bad blocks they will be written to the new drive. A clean install is always the best option. Did the pc come with an OEM licence and a key or is the key built into the system?
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