Windows 10 Dual Booting/Compatibility Questions (w/Windows 7 Gaming Build)

[ImNewToThis]

Hello! I built my gaming PC 13 months ago. Though I enjoy modding with some really old school programs on Windows 7 64 bit Professional (some as old as Sharp Ocarina for OOT modding) and take pleasure in other random acts of Windows 7 derping, the allure of Windows 10 games and DX12 (and Win 10 being free for me) has grown too strong for me to continue resisting the upgrade. I want to dual-boot it, and I have a DVD with the Windows 10 iso (note: I own Windows 7 and have the iso, all my games, and etc legally - no piracy here) ready, but first, I have a few questions. (Note: This PC is used for some programming, school work, light video and photo editing, and a lot of gaming. It's my primary PC.)

1. Will I have to hunt for new hardware drivers?
- My PC has a MSI GTX 970 Twin Frozr, 16 gb DDR3 @2133 mhz, an i7 4790k (I plan on overclocking in the future when I need to, it has a Hyper 212 Evo cooling it), a 500 gb Samsung Evo 850 SSD (boot drive where Windows 7 was installed and contains many programs-269/465gb free), a Archer T9E wireless card, a 4 tb WD Black hard drive (where all of my Steam games except modded Skyrim reside), and a LG WH16NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD reader/writer. ~ Any need to worry?

2. Will I be able to run my old Windows 7 games through Windows 10 without installing new programs to run them?
- I Steam with a modded Skyrim (through Nexus Mod Manager) on the SSD and Witcher 3 through GOG on the SSD; but apart from that my games are all operated through Steam and reside upon the WD HDD. Will I be able to just put Windows 10 on a SSD partition and keep my old Windows 7 gaming hook up?

3. Will I be missing out on gaming performance or anything by not doing a clean install of Windows 10?
- If I'm actually going to take a performance hit, I'd be fine letting go of a lot of my older programs. Ideally, I would like to keep my Windows 7 setup, but if that will hurt performance, I could (sadly ) let the old thing go. Moving all my old school projects, programs, photos, and etc just seems like a lot of work. (Note: Another reason I wanted to keep Windows 7 was Windows 10 privacy concerns, with all of those connections to random IP addresses I've heard about, needing to use a Microsoft account, and etc. Example- http://thehackernews.com/2016/02/microsoft-windows10-privacy.html)

4. Is there anything else I should be aware of before popping in my Windows 10 disk and installing it to a partition on my SSD boot drive?
- For example, I've heard that you need to disable fast and hybrid boot to prevent windows system restore points and other such data from being erased from the other OS by the one in use. A. Is that true? B. Is there anything like that I should be aware of?

5. I plan on getting a 8tb backup drive (maybe a WD mybook sort of thing, maybe a WD Green 8tb drive internally, etc- I'm not sure yet), should I get and use this before I try to dual boot?

6. Do you think there is a better way I should go about getting Windows 10 (like just dumping Windows 7 and using the updater) or is dual-booting a good way to do it?

Thanks for any and all help you can provide, it means a lot to me! Thanks for reading, and have a great day!

 

[SkyNetRising]

1. If you upgrade, it may be necessary to reinstall graphics drivers. But other than that - no need to hunt for drivers.
If you do clean installation, then yes - prepare drivers before that.

2. If you upgrade, all installed software remains. Update process will warn you, if there are compatibility issues.
If you perform clean installation, then most of other software will need to be reinstalled.

3. Clean install may perform a bit better, but not by much.

4. Haven't heard of that.

5. You can install your new drive prior or after upgrade. It doesn't matter.

6. You can clone your windows 7 partition to another partition. You perform upgrade on one installation. Second installation will remain for backup purposes.

 

[wpgwpg]

If you have the space, you could always create a partition and do a clean install in the new partition. That would give you a dual boot environment where you could switch back and forth between 7 and 10 at will. I see you have 269 GB free on your SSD, so you could carve out say 120 GB for Windows 10. The bare bones install only takes about 15 GB before you add your software.

Good luck.

 

[ImNewToThis]

Thank you both! Sorry for disappearing, but this topic still matters to me.
Tomorrow I plan on doing a clean install to a SSD partition. I have cleared up my SSD a bit, so I now have 315 gb free. I plan on shrinking my Windows 7 partition to 200 gb (157.4 gb is used right now) and leaving the rest of the SSD (275 gb) to Windows 10 - because as much as I hate to say it, I can't live off Windows 7 forever . As for my HDD, I still have a lot of misc modding tools, emulators, and et cetera; including all of my PC games. I plan on shrinking its current partition to 750 gb (640.1 gb is used right now); leaving 3.75 tb to Windows 10. In the future, I may need to outfit a Linux build onto the PC, but I think I'll just get a 120 gb SSD (and select it to boot from in the boot menu) when I need it.
Do either of you (or anyone else) have an idea about something I should do, change, or et cetera before I follow through with the above plans?

 

[SkyNetRising]

On SSD you will need to create new partition for Windows 10 OS,
but on HDD there is no need to create new partition for Win10.
You can use existing hdd data partition shared between win7 and Win10.

Btw - offer on free Win10 upgrade expires very soon. It's 2016.07.29 - if I remember it correctly.