Reinstalling Win7 on SSD, do I need to reinstall HDD programs?

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kanoobie

kanoobie

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Oct 21, 2006
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My nephew has a system with: 128GB SSD (OS drive + photoshop) & 3TB HDD (storage)

Even though Windows7 is on his SSD, his downloads, documents, photos, and other personal folders are on the HDD.
He also has a ton of programs and games installed on the HDD.

The two main issue he has is that his SSD is full and he now keeps getting driver issues.

I just want to do a fresh install of the OS on the SSD and install photoshop on a new drive to solve both issues he is having.

My question is, would I need to reinstall all the programs that are on the HDD? If not, how would I prevent registry issues? Another concern is that Windows now uses the HDD for documents; would uninstalling windows remove the documents folder from the HDD?
Thanks
 
Solution
J
If you reinstall Windows, you will have to also reinstall all the programs and applications. Does not matter where they are. Anything that is on the HDD now will stay there, you want to unhook it anyway for the Windows reinstall. (in fact, you want to unhook all drives except the one you are installing Windows on, and your optical drive). After the install, you hook the other drives back up. Everything will be on them, and you can access all the data that was there, but the programs will have to be reinstalled.
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J

jitpublisher

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May 16, 2006
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If you reinstall Windows, you will have to also reinstall all the programs and applications. Does not matter where they are. Anything that is on the HDD now will stay there, you want to unhook it anyway for the Windows reinstall. (in fact, you want to unhook all drives except the one you are installing Windows on, and your optical drive). After the install, you hook the other drives back up. Everything will be on them, and you can access all the data that was there, but the programs will have to be reinstalled.
 
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Solution
USAFRet

USAFRet

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Programs installed on the HDD will need to be reinstalled if you reinstall the OS on the SDD.

However....first, let's determine what is sucking up all that space on the SSD. My 120GB SSD has the OS and a crapload of applications, and ~70GB used space. Adobe Lightroom, MS Office, PaintShop Pro, VideoStudio, etc, etc.

Install WinDirStat and investigate what is sucking up all that drive space.
Possibly you still have hibernation on (takes up HDD space equivalent to installed RAM)
Temp files.
Might be a lot of things.

In this instance, reinstalling the OS is a last step, not a first step. Find out what is using that space.
 
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kanoobie

kanoobie

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thanks for the quick reply, I was hoping there was a better way but at least now I know my best option would be to just backup the documents and format the storage drive in case the kid has any viruses/trojans on it.
 
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