molotovdaskwerl Posted November 3, 2012 Posted November 3, 2012 I wanna start off by saying hi all, it's been a while since i last posted. It seems like nowadays ima bein one of those guys that waddles in every four months to ask a question or two. Anyways, here's my situation. I'm fairly certain I have a dieing hard drive (lots of random blue screens, crashes and what have you) and my computer has gotten generally bogged down. I feel like now would be a perfect time to revive my computer a bit by putting in a new hard drive with an OS. I have a 1 tb hd ready to put in, and my school is now providing students with free versions of both win7 ultimate and win8 professional. First and foremost i wanna know if it's possible to put in the new hd, install the os onto it without affecting my old hard drive? while it isn't the most important thing, I would like to keep from reformatting or deleting anything from the old hard drive because I want to transfer some stuff from it. I have it in mind that I would download the OS onto my first hd, and then begin the install and pick the second hd as the target for it. Secondly the win OS's that I have available are all upgrade versions, will this be a problem with what i'm trying to do? I have Vista, but for some reason at some point it stopped being registered, so I don't know if that'll be an issue either. Lastly, i haven't looked into win8 at all, and don't know much about win7 ultimate either, which would be better for gaming efficient computer Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
slick2500 Posted November 4, 2012 Posted November 4, 2012 (edited) Easiest way to do what your talking about is plug in the hard drive you want to install the OS on, unplug your other hard drive, install new OS reboot, then plug second hard drive back in. Transfer whatever you want to save from the old hard drive to the new one, then just repeat the process for the second hard drive. And you can boot to whatever hard drive whichever OS is installed on by using the bios boot menu, most motherboards its f12. I did this back in the day when Vista first came out and when I was running the beta for Windows 7. Edited November 4, 2012 by slick2500 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
EuroFight Posted November 4, 2012 Posted November 4, 2012 Easiest way to do what your talking about is plug in the hard drive you want to install the OS on, unplug your other hard drive, install new OS reboot, then plug second hard drive back in. Transfer whatever you want to save from the old hard drive to the new one, then just repeat the process for the second hard drive. And you can boot to whatever hard drive whichever OS is installed on by using the bios boot menu, most motherboards its f12. I did this back in the day when Vista first came out and when I was running the beta for Windows 7. +1 for this You might also want to run disk checker on your failing OS drive to check for file system errors (Computer > Right click C > Tools > Error Checking, then reboot) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
molotovdaskwerl Posted November 4, 2012 Posted November 4, 2012 well i'm pretty much done with the old hard drive at this point so i'm not looking to hold onto it after i transfer from it Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
EuroFight Posted November 4, 2012 Posted November 4, 2012 Old HDDs are always useful for dedicated backups/media drives Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
molotovdaskwerl Posted November 4, 2012 Posted November 4, 2012 ok well i was thinking about saving it for backup, if that's all i use it for, it won't age while i run my computer anymore once i have the os on my computer? i will be running it from a dl, and i think it needs to be able to detect vista on the old hd can i specify during the install which hd i want it on, and i'm assuming it won't kill any files on the old hard drive, or would i unplug the old hard drive somewhere inbetween the install Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
EuroFight Posted November 4, 2012 Posted November 4, 2012 I know you can specify the install drive with Windows 7 install, but as Slick said, the safest way is to physically disconnect the other drive Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpikeSoprano Posted November 4, 2012 Posted November 4, 2012 If it's an upgrade version he won't have an os to upgrade on a new hd. He might have to install to the old hd if it still working good enough to accept it. Then again it might crash mid upgrade and he will lose everything. Just a tought. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
molotovdaskwerl Posted November 4, 2012 Posted November 4, 2012 (edited) honestly anything i could lose won't be that important, because what i absolutely need i will put on a usb drive, it's just going to be a bit of effort to get it all back into the new computer i think the way win 7 and likely win 8 upgrades work is, they simply detect for a copy an older OS then perform an install, such as a custom(clean) install based on what i've gotten from googling around so long as it detects my os just fine and i can specify which hard drive, i would imagine what's important is just that i get the os running on my new hd Edited November 4, 2012 by molotovdaskwerl Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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