Hello OzBargain Community,
I want to buy an SSD to replace the mechanical hard drive for my laptop. In terms of storage size, I'm looking for 128GB onwards - preferably 256GB/512GB.
I'm leaning towards the Samsung 850 Pro series one's due to warranty/performance reasons - and the Samsung software that comes with them!
I'm in Brisbane QLD, so if anyone has one for sale please contact me.
Thanks,
PLA74
Hi scrimshaw,
What's happened is that my Asus laptop came with a WD Blue 750GB mechanical hard drive. Recently it's crashed, stopped working, has bad sectors/blocks etc. Hence all my data (un-important thank god!) was gone. I removed the drive and put in a SATA to USB enclosure and then into a working Windows Laptop. The drive is recognised but just shows up as a RAW un-formatted drive. I'm basically trying to retrieve the Windows license key that the laptop came with so when I purchase a new SSD, I can load Windows onto it using this key.
Laptop and hard drive are both out of warranty now - hence need some help retrieving the OEM Windows 8 License key laptop came with and purchasing a new SSD so that the laptop is back to a useable state.
If you install a fresh copy of Windows, it gets validated automatically using the embedded key in the UEFI firmware. Hopefully anyway, if not, there are workarounds.
you can actually read the key from the firmware using certain utilities.
http://www.nextofwindows.com/firmwaretablesview-to-retrieve-…
Anyway here's a link for the windows iso if you need it
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/techbench
Awesome thank you so much. I will let you know how I go once i purchase a new SSD, physically install it into laptop and load Windows 8 back onto it.
I'm leaning towards one of the Samsung ones due to warranty and performance benefits.
Have been offered a Kingston and Sandisk branded ones so far by local sellers on Gumtree.
EASUS todo backup is completely free and does the job of cloning your drive to an SSD
http://lifehacker.com/5837543/how-to-migrate-to-a-solid-stat…
Though personally I would recommend doing a clean OS install on the SSD and re-installing the software you need. It really isn't as hard or as much hassle as you might think.
http://www.ninite.com/ makes the reinstallation process much easier.