Windows 7 - System image on new hard drive

If I need to replace my hard drive & I have an image which includes:
OEM Win 7 OS
Office 2007
Photoshop
Sibelius (expensive music software)
Compiler
McAfee...etc

What are the chances that I can transfer the image to the new drive and all the software will run without reactivation? Or the software sees a new drive as a new computer?

You should be able to transfer the image just fine as long as the new drive is larger than the previous drive. If you have trouble, try partitioning the drive to the exact size of the old one. Also, if you don't have your original installation disk you'll need system restore disks.

Also, if the old drive is still working, you may want to create an alternative system image via a third party backup software as a last resort. Macrium Reflect is a good choice. You'll need a boot cd that you can make through the program.

Take at look at this thread:
Restoring system image to a different harddrive?

Thanks for the response.

The link to MS technet suggests there are problems even restoring a windows system image to a new disk!!!!!

My initial question was would software like the type I mentioned see a new disk type and its security want a reactivation.

Can I put an image of my old laptop hard drive on a new laptop? Will that be a problem?
Thanks,
Bill

Programs do not see "disk types". They see adresses and do not really care on what medium the data resides. That's for the OS and driver to decypher.

Why are you guys all so hung up on cloning your hdd's? If you have an OEM license, it just takes a call to MS to reactivate. If you have retail licenses, again the same. If you've been reading this forum, you would know of all the permissions problems and other assorted problems people have been having. Nobody can guarantee that a particular cloning will work. It may not work in your case and then you'll have to spend a couple of days breaking your head over it. So just clean install to a new hdd.

Also, 3rd party apps, just activate/ register them on your new hdd the way you did on the previous one. Limited license apps like 3-pack AV's may be an issue if you've already activated max number of times. But most apps would do just fine.

The main reason is that cloning takes less than 1 hour but reinstall may take up to 3 days depending on how old your installation disk is. I recently installed a Vista with a 3 year old installtion disk and had the privilidge of over 400 updates including SP1 and SP2 plus all the updates for Office 2007 etc. In addition you have to redo all your private system and program settings and I had to reinstall about 50 programs. Reinstall can be a real drag.

Windows 7 still has no service pack so thankfully that aspect does not arise. I have vista on one of my machines and recently, when i wanted to reformat and reinstall, i just downloaded a clean copy of Vista SP2 (vista with sp2 included) off the web and installed with that.

For Office, i downloaded sp2/sp3 for both 2003 and 2007 (i have both), then just integrated them into the original cd. I now have both Office versions with the latest service packs integrated.

It takes less than a day to start building from scratch and have Windows 7 up and running. I agree with you its probably a matter of preference and inclination, but i would do a fresh install any day. I also relish the fact of having a beautiful, clean system all over again.

That is a good point. It was the reason I reinstalled that Vista from scratch. There were too may snags that had crept in over the 3 years.

Two issues raised:
The security component of much software (all of my examples) do check your hardware like disk serial No, mother board, etc. It uses this info in the key formulation process. Then when you run the software it assesses (I forget the technical term) if this machine is close enough to the original. If I took my image and put it on a new laptop all of the mentioned software would want to be reactivated.
If my disk dies (ie no time to deactivate software) I want to simply get things back up and running with an image. Otherwise a clean install and reactivating and configuring all the software is a big effort.

Sorry but incorrect - OEM installed OSs are a curse. I've been down this path. MS will NOT reactivate and refer you back to the OEM for all support issues. I've only dealt with one OEM (ACER) and it was torture. ACER wanted me to pay them for any advice on reinstalling the OS!!