Windows 7 & Boot Camp on hard drive upgrade questions

I am using a MacBook Pro 2010 model with 320 GB HD and 2.66 GHz C2D processor and 8 GB RAM. I am also running Windows 7 Home Premium using VMware Fusion 3. I am not too enthusiastic about running Windows this way as it is hard on system resources (even with 8 GB of RAM), the space allocated to Windows is limited, and this also reduces the HD space I can use for OS X.

So, I want to upgrade the HD to a 750 GB drive, and then partition it using Boot Camp--probably 250 GB for Windows 7 and 500 GB for OS X. I have installed Windows 7 with a Boot Camp partition once before on another machine, so know how to do that. And, from what I understand, upgrading the hard drive shouldn't be that difficult either; I plan to use Time Machine to backup what I have on OS X and then load it on the newly installed hard drive.

My question isn't how to do any of the above, but if once I've put in the new hard drive, installed OS X and (with Boot Camp) Windows 7, will I need a new license for Windows 7? Will using the same Windows 7 Home Premium disc (64-bit) as I used to install it on VMware be possible? Or will Microsoft consider the installation on the new hard drive as a whole new installation on another computer? It was a single-license edition of Win 7 that I used for the VMware installation. Does the license get "read" or registered through something in the logic board or from the hard drive? In other words, will using the same Win 7 installation disc again on the same computer but a different hard drive prompt me to purchase a new license? The same question would apply for Office 2010 which I also have installed on the VMware side.

Thanks for reading the above, and any comments, advice, etc are most appreciated.

As long as you have a full retail version of Windows 7, or a student version, then you can transfer the license from one machine to another. If I were you, I'd refrain from activating Windows until the last moment, just to be sure this is what you want to do, because if you transfer the license back to the VM again, things may get tricky.

Once you're ready to activate Windows, if the last activation was more than 12 months ago, it'll probably work automatically. You may be unlucky and have to call the Microsoft number but that's not really a big deal.

Just be sure this is what you want to do before activating.