I took the working hard drive, OS and all, from my previous laptop and slotted into the framework. No OS installation needed.
Getting the framework driver’s was painful. I needed to download them over wifi, but wifi wasn’t working because it needed the driver. okay, download on another computer and install via USB, nope. USB drivers aren’t working either. I ended up spotting my hard drive into my desktop, downloading the drivers that way, and then moving it back to the framework laptop to install.
My anecdotal experience - my Asus gaming laptop died about 6 months ago. with a lot of trouble shooting, I determined it was most likely the mobo. I decided to go with a framework, and was able to bring over my hard drive and ram, saving me like $400.
It may be a separate issue to drivers, because I have this other issue where after waking up from sleep, I have to either reboot or physically remove the USB port and plug it back in to make the USB work. I’ve disabled “allow windows to put this device to sleep” for every single USB titled thing in device manager, so I’m not sure what the issue is. I plan on installing a small linux partition at some point to play around and see if I like it.