Questions pertaining to Windows 7 OS's and OS migration

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Brucey_Bonus

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Aug 16, 2012
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Hello!
I currently have Windows 7 Home Premium on my primary HDD and am planning to upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate via the Windows 7 Ultimate Upgrade (physical copy), but am also going to soon be installing a new SSD.

My questions are:
Can the Windows 7 Ultimate Upgrade be used as a full OS or does it need a prior full copy of an entire operating system that has been previously installed; i.e. "My Windows 7 Home Premium"?

In that case, could I install the operating system to my new SSD whilst having the HDD uninstalled, and then simply reinstall my HDD and delete the older boot files from there (since they will be no longer needed for I will be booting from the SSD) and be returned all of my personal files stored in the HDD previously. Or would this form of 'migration' completely not work?

Thank you for your time!
 
Solution
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When you reinstall the HDD after the clean install that partition will no longer be active (since the new clean install would have already marked the new partition as the active system partition - so you can go into disk management and delete the old 100MB partition off of the HDD (windows will not allow it to be deleted if it is set as the active boot partition but once it is no longer active it can...
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Brucey_Bonus

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Aug 16, 2012
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The reason I am upgrading to Ultimate is that there is potential for me to upgrade RAM at some point in the future, to where Windows 7 Home Premium cannot support such quantities; (16GB+ I believe?), and since the Windows 7 Ultimate upgrade is merely more priced than the Professional upgrade counterpart, I fall kindly to this acquisition and choose the Ultimate. (Mainly for bragging rights! :p)

As for the tutorials you sent me, I'll beg you since you appear more knowledgeable, but this clean installation technique can obviously be performed through cross-storage devices. i.e. "Drive 1 to drive 2, vice versa?

Sorry for being pesky and thank you for the response!

 
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k1114

k1114

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May 2, 2010
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I'm not sure what you mean by cross storage. If you are wondering if it'll work because you are upgrading ssd/hdd then it doesn't matter. You can change those out a million times and it'll still work on your pc. If you install it on the ssd, all the files on your hdd will still be there.
 
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Brucey_Bonus

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Aug 16, 2012
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Alright thank you, that clarifies things a bit.
You see I thought that by proceeding with just clean installing the OS onto the SSD and then accessing the HDD would have been filled with faults because I thought that registries would have been damaged or something. And in that case would I just simply delete the old boot files from the HDD?

Thanks
 
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k1114

k1114

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May 2, 2010
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The files on the hdd will be completely unaffected. Many choose to disconnect extra drives when installing just to make sure the os is installed on the right drive. You don't even need to delete boot files. Even after installing the os on the ssd, you could even boot from the hdd.
 
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JDFan

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Jan 5, 2010
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Main reason for doing this is if there is a second drive in the system windows has a tendency to place the hidden 100MB system boot partition onto that second HDD rather than on the system drive, which means that later if you remove or change out the second HDD the system will not boot since the boot files are no longer on the system - until you fix things and copy the boot files onto the system HDD which can be a PITA if not done before removing the old HDD -- so to avoid it being placed on a secondary HDD it is best to install windows with only 1 physical HDD that will be used as the system drive installed and then adding the other HDDs afterwards.

 
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Brucey_Bonus

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Aug 16, 2012
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Alright but if I obviously clean install the OS straight onto the SSD then that 100MB boot partition will be situated onto that SSD drive.

So if there will be no issues with just straight installing the HDD again and deleting the old boot files, how do I get rid of that hidden 100MB boot partition remaining on the HDD?

Thanks
 
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JDFan

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Jan 5, 2010
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When you reinstall the HDD after the clean install that partition will no longer be active (since the new clean install would have already marked the new partition as the active system partition - so you can go into disk management and delete the old 100MB partition off of the HDD (windows will not allow it to be deleted if it is set as the active boot partition but once it is no longer active it can be deleted.)

 
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