Confusion About Activation on New windows Install on second HD

Will I have troubles installing Win 7 home prem on a second hard drive and swapping them back and forth for a few weeks... Intel I get the new install perfected.

what happens if I go ahead and activate the new install ? will the old hard drive with windows install on it show a invalid activation or will windows just look at the machine ID and view things all the same as it does when I clone a hard drive ? ?


Can you install Windows (7) twice on the same computer? - AnandTech Forums

Hi Don.

its NOT a problem, as your basically testing, MS has actually given you the means to do it

ON the test drive when installing use the SKIP option when you get to the install product key page.

This will then set a default key on the drive. This gives a 30 day grace period
This period can also be increased by using the command
slmgr /rearm
This gives you another 30 days and usually can be run 3x, so 120 days
for more info see tutorial
License Information for Windows 7 - Windows 7 Help Forums


note
see also de-licencing tutorial, if you have allready doubled up
Product Key Number - Uninstall and Deactivate in Windows - Windows 7 Help Forums

Roy

If you are swapping hard drives in the same computer, the easiest way to do this is to install and activate Windows on one disk, do a backup of the disk, then restore the backup to the other disk.

As long as you have only one disk in the computer at a time, there should never be any problem swapping disks.