Help adding new SSD with Win10 for dual boot

[jaygatsby9]

Hi.
I have a Maingear system that's three years old. The SSD is running Win7 and has no room left. The Hard Drive is 70% full. I am not "tech savvy".
My thought is to add a brand new SSD and then do a clean install of Win10 onto that SSD using a USB drive (via free upgrade) so that I can just keep everything I already have while also switching to Win10 and adding some storage. Is this possible? Will the other dive letters automatically change and then be recognized? If someone could please tell me which SSD to buy (NOOB question: PCI-e v SATA) and provide simple instruction as to how to do what I'd like to do, I'd really appreciate it. I then plan to upgrade my video card, which ATI no longer even supports, so I can take advantage of the new DirectX, but I figure that's just a matter of pulling something out and putting something else in (that's what she said).
Thanks for your help and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

 

[ob1]

I think the first issue you will run into would be that in order to upgrade to W10 you have to upgrade the W7 first. My advice would be to possibly clone your existing drive to the new drive, then disconnect the old drive. Run the upgrade to W10. After the upgrade, then do a clean install on the new SSD with W10. I am not sure if there are even boot managers anymore, (someone chime in) but my son used to use his BIOS to boot from one of three drives for his OS of choice. Essentially, I don't think you can just put in a W10 stick and install using your W7 license.

 

[doublejack]

Ob1 is correct. You have to upgrade to windows 10 from an activated copy of windows 7. The easiest way to do that is to clone your current SSD to the new larger drive, and then upgrade windows. You can then reconnect you existing SSD and either use the bios to select which drive to boot from, or you can use a boot manager. The windows bootloader can handle dual booting 10 and 7 from different drives, or you could use something else such as grub.

Just a question - if you are upgrading to 10 why do you want windows 7 as a dual boot option? Do you have a specific need for 7?

 

[jaygatsby9]

Actually, I decided to just stick with Win 7; there was no reason for dual boot (except I was worried about erasing the old drive) and as I think about it, I really see no reason to move to Win 10 yet. So the new plan is to buy a larger SSD, clone the current one to the new one so I don't have to re-do everything, and then erase the current one, so I have the extra storage on the OS SSD, an extra (80GB SSD) to fill up, and the remaining 250GB of hard drive that's left. That should work, right?

Thanks everyone.

 

[[21CW]killerofall]

Ob1 is correct.

No Ob1 is not correct. You can do a clean install of Windows 10 without upgrading your old copy of Windows first. To do this, just install Windows 10 without entering in a key. Then activate it with your Windows 7/8/8.1 key.

Yes the cloning will work just fine. Just make sure that you change your boot order so that you boot to the new drive. Windows should assign a new drive letter to your old drive. Then all you need to do is a simple reformat on the old drive.