Ive learned that in SL your have to have a SSD. Up to this point ive never thought of using one. Yeah I know,I know Mr primative. Anyhow my problem is this. I did but a copy of Windows 10 home edition a couple years back from Bestbuy. It was that USB flask stick format. After we moved Ive completely lost it, Windows key everything. Should I just hang it up and buy a new copy or is do you think Microsoft could help me somehow?
FYI, in case you missed it, Blizzard has updated the minimum requirements:
The text of the Systems Specifications for Shadowlands was updated a few minutes ago on our Support Site: https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/256565
The minimum requirements section for Storage now reads:
Solid State Drive (SSD)
100GB available space
Or
Hard Disk Drive (HDD)
100GB available space (depending on the performance of the drive, player experience may be impacted on HDD)
It will still be a better experience switching to SSD, but you don’t have to do it.
To answer your question, you would probably need to buy a new copy/key … there is a chance, if you are just swapping parts, Microsoft might help you. I don’t know if you realized this, but you don’t need to replace your boot/Windows drive - you can add a second drive to run games from.
If you’ve activated windows 10 on your system, it is locked to your motherboard (or microsoft account)
A retail version (or upgrade from 7 paid version, should be same as retail 10) should allow you to transfer the key to other systems (one at any given time), but if you’ve lost the key you won’t need to input the key or buy a new one for your existing motherboard.
If you link it with a microsoft account, you won’t have to use the key again either. You can freely change it from one computer to the next (one at a time) if you link it to microsoft account.
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-link-your-windows-10-product-key-microsoft-account
OEM W10 licenses are different and remain locked to one motherboard.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/oem-version-of-windows-10-and-microsoft-account/66edefe0-d1cd-4652-a5a3-1748733af6b6
tl;dr if you got a retail key (which you should have, if you got it at Best Buy) then all you need to do is log in to your microsoft account if you linked it after you install, OR if you are using a local account, it should still remember your motherboard once you connect to the internet without having the actual key numbers.
You should link it with a microsoft account so you never have to use the key again and you can use it for the lifetime of your one system, regardless of hardware upgrades.
EDIT: You can also make at any time from any computer a Windows 10 Media Creation Tool with an 8gb or larger USB stick. Use that to install Windows and then you can fix activation later either with internet activation with local account (remembers motherboard) or via microsoft account if you’ve linked it.
Media creation tool:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
I just installed the SSD in the computer, made a new partition for it and it worked quite nicely.