I'm likely going to be in the market for a new PC in the next 3-6 months, the existing one is pretty dated (bought in 2011 lol) and while it just about still does what I need it to do I could probably use a new build
I've no interest in Win 10 and am perfectly happy with my current Win 7 setup, I'm mostly interested in the logistics of porting what's on my existing HDD to the new one. The current drive is only 500gb so I could easily get everything onto an SSD, but if I've read things right, Windows configures a bunch of things to be specific to the existing PC hardware, so I don't know if it is as simple as buy SSD - copy current HDD image to it - plug SSD into new PC - profit?
I've got a legit Win 7 key so it's not a case of not wanting to do a fresh install for anything like that, I'm just looking to minimise the ballache of porting all programs, data etc over to the new setup. What's the typical play here?
If you bought your computer with Win7 pre-installed, then you'll have an OEM license. In which case, that license key is tied to that given computer - Microsoft won't like you moving it around as you describe.
If you got a retail version (ie, bought standalone) then just install it on your new machine, and copy over your user data (documents etc.), and re-install software afresh on your new PC.
My advise would be to move on to windows 10 as support for windows 7 will end Jan of next year, no more updates, bug fix, etc.. Free update to 10, and i'd go with fresh installs of all apps.
