Bought a hard drive - had Windows 10 on it - can I install?

[ChpBstrd]

You may be able to answer this question if you work in an IT department imaging Windows drives and doing fresh installs.

Backstory:
I bought a hard disk drive on eBay to use as a backup disk for my MacBook. When I went to format the drive on my old linux box, I noticed its content had not been erased. The content was Windows 10 with only a "default" user folder. On a whim, I decided to see if it was bootable. I figured it would immediately error out, but to my surprise it started taking me down the setup wizard for Windows 10. I did not continue through setup because I wanted to keep my options open. I suspect that an IT department somewhere restored a computer to factory settings, and then somebody sold the hard drive out of it without wiping it, and so now I have a generic disk image produced under their enterprise license.

Motive:
I have an old Microsoft Surface Pro 3 that I obtained with its hard drive wiped. I would love to be able to put Windows 10 back on it. It is currently running Ubuntu, but the touch screen has never worked all that well using that O.S. This model is not user-serviceable, and is in fact glued together, so I cannot just swap hard drives to see how it works out. I'd have to commit some serious time to attempting to install Windows on this machine, and then restoring it to Ubuntu if that didn't work out. Having never done corporate Windows installs, I do not know if such an adventure is worth considering, or just a waste of time.

Question:
Might there be a way to use this disk image to install Windows, or will I eventually hit a point where I have to enter a registration/license code? Any chance I could simply copy this image to the SSD of my Surface and get it to boot?

[Ichabod]

The Windows license is tied to the motherboard, not the hard drive, so having Windows on the hard drive doesn't do much for you.

You should be able to re-install Windows on the Surface without any issues. Just get a USB stick and use the Windows media creation tool. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 Windows should pick up that the Surface already has a license associated with it. Even if it for some odd reason it doesn't, you can still use Windows without a license. It will have a watermark on the display, and a few other restrictions, but not a huge deal in my experience.

[RWD]

You may be able to use it but it certainly will need a license to be activated. Not worth bothering with when you can get an official clean up-to-date install image from Microsoft directly.

Installing Windows is the easy part. You can either run it unlicensed (with watermark) or buy a license. I bought my last Windows 10 Pro license for ~$35 from Kinguin (for use with a clean install).

[Daley]

It's possible to install Windows 10 to a hard drive without a license key, so it's entirely possible that there is no license associated with the install, especially given how the license is typically tied to the hardware and stored in the BIOS or the hardware hash stored in a MS activation server. Heck, it's possible to download and create Windows 10 install media without a license in the first place, and run Windows 10 in a restricted and limited unregistered mode on hardware that doesn't have a license registered to it. This said, don't use license keys that isn't yours to use, and don't use Windows 10 installs you didn't install from trustworthy media.

Not knowing more about the tablet itself, it sounds like whomever you bought the tablet from may have properly refurbished the device and deactivated the license associated with the tablet when they wiped the drive, and sold it at a discount without a replacement Windows 10 MAR license tied to it (this is speculation, but is the proper and official Microsoft approved refurbish method)... which means that you might have to buy a new Win 10 license for the thing if you want to use Windows. Given there's no Windows 11 support provided for the Surface Pro 3, it may or may not be a waste of money to buy a Windows 10 license to ride Windows 10 out until 2025 if there's no active license for the device... especially if it's still kicking and you decide to go back to Linux to keep usable hardware out of the landfill.

This said, are you aware that there's a custom built Linux kernel specifically for Surface devices to properly support all its hardware and peripherals? This might help your touchscreen problems a lot faster than juggling OS installs: https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface

[jim555]

I would bleach bit that drive and wipe it clean.  You never know what is hiding on an old drive.

[ChpBstrd]

This said, are you aware that there's a custom built Linux kernel specifically for Surface devices to properly support all its hardware and peripherals? This might help your touchscreen problems a lot faster than juggling OS installs: https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface

Was not aware of this. I'll look into it. However it appears to be a work in progress.

[AccidentialMustache]

I would bleach bit that drive and wipe it clean.  You never know what is hiding on an old drive.

This. I don't want the last idiot to own a drive's collection of malware laden bits.

[ChpBstrd]

I would bleach bit that drive and wipe it clean.  You never know what is hiding on an old drive.

This. I don't want the last idiot to own a drive's collection of malware laden bits.

Sounds like there's no advantage to keeping the data, so I'll just nuke it and resume with my plans for a backup drive.

[thedigitalone]

What Ichabod said is right on.  Surface devices will automatically activate Win10 licenses once the OS has been reinstalled.

Do a complete format, install a new clean Win 10 build using the link above. Once you get to the desktop and connect to the Internet go to Settings -> Activation and it'll show "Windows is activated with a digital license"

[Daley]

This said, are you aware that there's a custom built Linux kernel specifically for Surface devices to properly support all its hardware and peripherals? This might help your touchscreen problems a lot faster than juggling OS installs: https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface

Was not aware of this. I'll look into it. However it appears to be a work in progress.

That's an apt description of Linux in general. No cost and very little time lost to try, and if it works, is far less of a time commitment than migrating operating systems.