New hdd for win 7 upgrade

[jrhilsch]

I pre-ordered windows 7 upgrade when it was $50 to be received in October. My plan is to purchase new hard drives by then. Right now I am running a WD caviar black 640gb. Before windows 7 is released, I will purchase a velociraptor for a boot drive, and another WD caviar black 640gb for RAID 0. My question is, will I be able to install my Windows 7 upgrade to a new drive if I have vista installed on another drive? I will do a clean install no matter what, but what would be the best method for getting my windows 7 onto a new hdd.

Thanks

 

[Devastator_uk]

You'd be best doing a clean install

 

[jrhilsch]

I plan on doing a clean install no matter what... my question is, will I be able to install windows 7 on a NEW velociraptor with my upgrade?

 

[Snowbum]

.....ofcourse....

 

[daship]

The raptor is a waste of money, if your gonna spend some cash get Intel SSd. The WD 640 can keep up with the raptor.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

i have a raptor and a wd 1tb caviar black 32 mb cache,and i agree the wd is still faster because of the built in dual processers!raptor not worth the extra$$$$$$$$$$$$.

 

[jrhilsch]

Alright... I kept hearing that velociraptors weren't worth the $$, but I wouldn't believe until I heard it first hand. Do you guys have any links that would show some benchmarks supporting this?

I don't think I want a 1tb drive as a boot drive. Would you guys have any suggestions for my best option. I was thinking the wd caviar black 320gb. It's a little cheaper, and I still get the benefit of a 320gb platter.

As for my original question, I read on MaximumPC (not sure if I'm allowed to mention this here) that you will need Windows Vista SP2 installed on the hdd in order to use the Windows 7 upgrade. Have any you guys heard this?


EDIT: Wow, just realized there is no WD caviar black 320gb... Now I'm open to any boot drive suggestions...

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

my two rigs boot from a 640 black!!!!!!

 

[jrhilsch]

I'm glad you said that, because I just bought two more WD CB 640gb hdd's to go with my first one from zipzoomfly. They are on sale for $65, but I used bing cashback to get them for $61. I will put 2 in a raid 0 and keep one for a boot drive. How big a partition to you recommend I create for my OS?

 

[cjl]

The raptor is a waste of money, if your gonna spend some cash get Intel SSd. The WD 640 can keep up with the raptor.

The 640 cannot hope to keep up with the velociraptor. It does keep up with the older gen raptors in many benchmarks, but in every way, it is beaten by the velociraptor (just so you know, my main boot array is Velociraptors in RAID 0, while my storage drive and install location for test OSes (such as Linux and Win7) is a 1TB Caviar Black. The velociraptors are noticeably faster in every way).

Of course, the velociraptor won't keep up with a good SSD, but the Intel drive is only worth it if you don't need much space. There's a big difference between 300GB and 80GB. Currently, I plan on getting an 80GB X25-M when Win7 comes out, and installing the OS to the X25, the apps to the velociraptors, and keep the files and miscellaneous storage on the Caviar Black.

 

[RetiredChief]

cjl - +1^, good setup

jrhilsch
Since you alread bought 2 more WD Black 640's. I bought two of them and put them in a raid 0 configuration. Raid 0 results in the operating system treating the two drives as one drive. BUT if you set up a raid 0 stripe on the first 100 gigs ( Called short stroking. For operating system and programs) and then setup the remainder of the drive as a 2nd stripe (For your files) the operating system treats them as two drives. This cut my access time down to mid 9 mSec for the operating system/programs. How much performance boost - not sure, but did improve preceieved performance.

2nd question. Vista upgrade disk was the same in that the previous operating system had to be installed, BUT There was a work around. DO NOT know if this work around will work for Win 7 - BUT I plan on tring it as I two ordered the $50 upgrade (My vista upgrade was a freebee).

What I did with Vista upgrade. 1st disconnected XP HDD. 2nd Installed Vista upgrade WITHOUT entering the Key. After Vista upgrade loaded, I then reinstalled vista and entered the Key. Reconnected XP and using F12 to select boot drive (Gigabyte MB) I could dual boot to old operating system, or vista. Was great while the ironed the bugs out of Vista. I know have a triple boot, XP pro, Vista Bus, and Win 7 RC Using F12 -NO software boot manager needed to screw up. REPEAT - do not know if they left this "feature" for Win 7, But plan on trying.