Reinstalling 7 on New Drive

[ohsonoob]

Hi Community,

I currently have Windows 7 64-bit on one drive on my computer and I plan on buying a new SATA drive (current drive is an older IDE drive yuck I know). Now the disks I have is an upgrade disk and I also currently have Windows XP on a separate partition on the same drive Windows 7 is on. The only reason why I want to move Win 7 onto the newer SATA drive would be to keep both operating systems on two separate disks and because Win 7 is the OS I use 99.9% of the time, I'd like to utilize the SATAII transfer speeds versus using IDE speeds (yuck again).

My question is would I run into issues when installing Windows 7 on a new disk even when it's installed on another disk? Also is there any shortcuts I could make so that I would not have to reinstall every single program again like making an image of the drive then copying it to the new drive?

Thanks in advanced for the help.

 

[number13]

a few option, make a drive .img, or ghost the drives, either one works well, but either process copies both OS's as well, if you are wanting a Win7 install on one drive(the new one) only, shut down the computer, disconnect the old drive from the computer and connect the new drive, restart with the Win 7 installation disk in the CD/DVD, and install, remove the Win 7 install disk, and afterwards shut down and reconnect the old drive, reboot

 

[RetiredChief]

Concur with Number13 +1
You can do as you asked, clone the Old drive to a New drive. Most HDD manuf have a Free program that will clone the Old drive to the new drive. WD has a Limited version of Acronis True Image. Only works if New HDD is a WD and IT RECOGNIZES the drive - I tried it and it gave error message saying One of the Drives Has to to Be WD - It was. O'well Had the 2009 version and it worked great.

In Your case where you have both Operating systems on the One HDD, I agree with #13, it would be better to do a clean install. Reason is you do NOT want the Boot info from the old drive on the New drive as this can cause problems down stream. At #13 said (Imprtant) - remove old drive (disconnect data cable) and do installation. Once you have completed the Installation you can reconnect "Old" HDD and During the Post hit a key to give you the Boot menu (On My MB it's F12),

You can use the Upgrade version to do a Clean Install as You own the qualifing operating system, just do a Custom install. There are acouple of hoops you have two jump thru, but not difficult. Do a google search for "using Upgrade Win 7 for a clean Install.

 

[ohsonoob]

But I would also like to keep the old drive as general storage. Would I have a case where I have two options of Windows 7 to boot into (as well as XP)?

 

[number13]

I believe so

 

[RetiredChief]

Yes, with the F12 (My Key) it will show HDD (s), cd drives ect. In Bios you would set Boot priority to HDD - Drive x (x = SSD). Only need to press F12 if you want o boot to OLD win 7, or XP - then select that drive. Then you should see your old boot menu.

Once you are satisfied with new Win 7, you MAY be able to delete win 7 on old drive - CAUTION doing so may mess up master Boot record and you will not be able to boot into XP. I do NOT use software Boot menus, there is probably a Proper method to getting rid of one operating system leaving the other intack.

 

[ohsonoob]

Yes, with the F12 (My Key) it will show HDD (s), cd drives ect. In Bios you would set Boot priority to HDD - Drive x (x = SSD). Only need to press F12 if you want o boot to OLD win 7, or XP - then select that drive. Then you should see your old boot menu.

Once you are satisfied with new Win 7, you MAY be able to delete win 7 on old drive - CAUTION doing so may mess up master Boot record and you will not be able to boot into XP. I do NOT use software Boot menus, there is probably a Proper method to getting rid of one operating system leaving the other intack.

Yea since my hardware supports virtualization, I'm probably gonna wipe the entire old drive once I'm satisfied with everything on the new drive with windows 7 and then just use XP mode for any XP things I need. If not I can just make a small partition (of like 10 gbs again) and put XP on that again.

 

[ohsonoob]

Best answer selected by ohsonoob.