[idokamaroq]

I have a couple noobish questions regarding fresh OS installation on a fresh drive. So, I plan on upgrading my laptop's HDD to an SSD in a few weeks and I’m in the process doing my initial research. I’ve decided against migrating my current drive to the new one and going with the fresh install instead to make sure that everything goes as smooth as possible with the new drive with regards to system optimization for an SSD (TRIM command, partition alignment, etc). However, my laptop doesn’t have an optical drive (and I’d prefer not to buy an external one since I’m already splurging on the SSD), and I don’t have OS DVDs anyway.

I have a two week old recovery USB flash drive that I created through W8.1’s “create a recovery drive” tool before installing W10. I checked “copy recovery partition” when going through the wizard and it’s roughly 32GB. I guess it’s an image of that partition? I’m not too sure. I imagine that this isn’t enough to do a full OS install on the blank SSD once I’ve dropped it in my laptop. So, is there an easy way to create a bootable OS installation thumb drive for Windows 8.1 (I’d rather not pay for a new OS license), and would that plus the recovery drive take care of setting up all the recovery and OEM partitions on the new SSD?

Thanks in advance!

[RichardBurt]

You will need an ISO of your current OS. Once you have downloaded that follow these instruction to create a bootable USB drive:

How to create a bootable Windows 8.1 USB drive

[idokamaroq]

Right, but is there any way I could get the ISO?
Or maybe I should look at migrating only certain partitions to the new drive?

Edit: Not sure how I hadn't found this already, but when I go to install that, will it take care of creating the new OEM/recovery partitions?

[RichardBurt]

Right, but is there any way I could get the ISO?
Or maybe I should look at migrating only certain partitions to the new drive?

Edit: Not sure how I hadn't found this already, but when I go to install that, will it take care of creating the new OEM/recovery partitions?

Your Win 8.1 is more than likely an OEM licence so you would need to get either the recovery DVD from the laptop manufacturer or find an ISO to download from somewhere.

If your laptop uses UEFI to boot then the licence key will be embedded in the BIOS so you 'll need to try and find that as well.

[RichardBurt]

PS The method on that link you posted WILL work. It won't create any recovery partitions though.

[jmshub]

As Richard said, the link you posted is all you need. You won't have a recovery partition, but you don't need it. SSDs are already usually smaller than a mechanical HDD, and you have the USB installation media that you create with this process that will be all you need if you should need to perform a system recovery or reinstallation.

[idokamaroq]

Alright, thanks guys!