Windows 7 & New Hard Drive

Greeink

Weaksauce
Joined
Jul 15, 2009
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Hopefully I have posted this in the right place. If not, please move.

Okay. I took advantage of the Windows 7 upgrade deal awhile back and should be receiving my download CD in the mail soon.

Currently I am running Windows XP. I would like to install Windows 7 on a new internal hard drive that I will be purchasing today. I've heard that XP needs to be installed on the hard drive and afterward use the Windows 7 upgrade disc to install the new OS. I assume this is true, as I'm upgrading...

My real question, as I do not have very much experience with new hard drives, is will I be able to completely remove my current hard drive and replace it with my new one... and install XP/ Upgrade to Windows 7? For some reason I have a feeling this isn't going to work, as XP was already installed on my older hard drive? Is this going to be a problem, and if so, is there any way to install Windows XP on my new hard drive... thus upgrading to Windows 7?

I've "Googled" and "Binged"around, but haven't found a good answer for my question...

Much Appreciated,
Greeink

EDIT

I believe I found that I'me pretty much SOL on a new hard drive... I'll be required to purchase a full version of Windows 7.. Correct?
 
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Awesome. Thanks.. I guess I'll give these a shot later. Seems to be "luck of the draw."
 
I picked up the family pack which I think is the same as the home premium upgrade. I also got a new SSD and installed that in my main rig but left the old harddrive with XP still installed. I was able to do a clean install to the new drive with no problems. I just chose the custom install route, put in the product key and activated once I got connected.

So far no problems!
 
I picked up the family pack which I think is the same as the home premium upgrade. I also got a new SSD and installed that in my main rig but left the old harddrive with XP still installed. I was able to do a clean install to the new drive with no problems. I just chose the custom install route, put in the product key and activated once I got connected.

So far no problems!

Did Windows 7 pick up the XP drive and add it to the boot menu?
 
No, but when I went into BIOS to make sure my dvd burner and ssd were in the boot priority list as 1 and 2 I removed my old drive from the list. After everything seemed to be working I formatted the old drive...otherwise I'd go back and check.

When I get my Q6600 back in business I'll try the same thing on there and let you know though!
 
I would also like to know for sure, since I'm on the same boat. I have my copy of Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade sitting next to me, but I want to install it onto an x25-M G2 SSD if possible. I don't want 2 Windows, just 1 that runs primarily from the SSD.
 
Windows 7 UPGRADE can be clean installed on a new drive WITHOUT previous version media.

I formatted my 320GB SATA drive, then install Windows 7 Pro 64bit Upgrade without needing any other CD or files.
 
I have XP home on my old disk. I bought a brand new disk for the Windows 7 upgrade. I just plugged the new disk in the 'master' (if SATA does such a thing) and plugged the old disk in a secondary slot. Anyways, I installed just fine with Method #1 from the above mentioned link. I didn't even format the disk. Installed great on a clean disk. I even can access the old XP home files from Windows 7 as drive D. Makes for nice transfer.

'F8' allows me to choose to boot up from XP on the old disk on the ASUS P5Q otherwise the boot defaults to Windows 7 on the new disk. No problems at all.
 
Nice, that's awesome. I guess I'll wait a little longer until I finally install Win 7. I should get my X25-M in the mail next week.

I really want to get rid of XP, there's this horrible memory leak in FireFox that I just can't get rid of, but somehow works like a charm in Win 7(7100). Same thing for TMT3 Platinum, works in Win 7 (7100) for me, and not in XP. The reasons to switch just keep adding up.
 
Odin, I got my Q6600 running again. I stuck a new harddrive in there and threw in my Win 7 upgrade disc and it works! No previous Windows installations was needed! :D
 
Hi guys, I almost forgot about this thread.
So yeah, I got my X25-M G2 (80GB) and installed Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit on it, using the Upgrade disk of course. Just like you guys told me, the installation and authentication went smoothly even after installing it in a completely separate drive. I can still go back and use XP without problems, but Windows 7 is so much faster it's not even worth it. So yeah guys, thanks a lot for the confirmation, I was scared at one point thinking it was not gonna work.

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Irrelevant info starts here:

BTW, for the ones wondering about the X25-M G2, I was not as impressed as I though I would. Maybe I need a faster computer to really take advantage of it (specs below). Launching application individually is relatively faster, but not crazy fast like some YouTube videos make it to be.

There were however some improvements, but I'm not sure if they are because of the SSD or Windows 7 64-bit. Major improvements happened in multi-tasking. I can have World of Warcraft running fullscreen in the middle of Dalaran (a really populated and laggy city), but now I'm able to ALT-TAB instantly and launch FireFox instantly as well. This takes me around 3 seconds, when in XP was more like 30 seconds. No matter what I have running it remains smooth, which is a very different story in XP. I think multi-tasking is where this drives, helped by Win7, really shine.
I also noticed WinRAR is substantially faster. I have a few 12GB files in my old HDDs and I unrar them in the same HDD, because I want to keep the SSD exclusive to my OS and Games. In XP 32-bit it takes 10minutes, but in Windows 7 64-bit it takes only 3.5minutes. Copying & Pasting, and Installing programs is also faster.

So yeah, It seems Windows 7 is helping a lot with the improvement. But it can also be that the SSD is so fast, that the computer has more time to spend doing the stuff I need it to do, and other things run faster even if they are not running from the actual SSD.

Thanks for reading.
 
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