Windows 7 + Vista Advice needed please

Bare Foot Kid said:

OK, here's what to do.



First; disconnect all the HDDs from the motherboard except the 1TB, only leave that one connected.

Then put the Windows 7 disk in the PC and set the BIOS to boot from the ODD first and use this tutorial to over-write everything on the 1TB HDD, it will take about 3 or 4 hours to complete, don't bother it while it does, you'll have a blinking cursor while it works and you'll get a message when it finishes.
When you get to Step Two create a partition to install Windows 7 to as you said earlier you would like to do this, here is how to enter a command to give you a 400GB partition, that should be plenty and you can create other partitions later in Windows 7..

create partition primary=409600MB <enter>

then finish the rest or that tutorial and then do the clean install of Windows 7 to that partition you created.


SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Reinstallation

How to Do a Clean Installation with Windows 7


Now let me look over what I've written and if there needs to be further info I'll add it in additional posts.

This is how you need to do it so you will still be able to boot into Vista and this will minimize the risk of you destroying Vista in the process.

I spoke to soon ..now this will seem like a silly question but if the drive is formatted/blank like the bloke in the shop said what am i overwritting?


I JUST REALISED I POSTED SLAVE AS SAYING 930MB WHEN IT IS SAYS 930GB WHICH I THINK IS A BLANK 1TB SO I DONT THINK THERE IS ANY DATA ON IT. IN FACT I KNOW IT IS BLANK

OK do as you please.

That's ok mate, you said it took the bloke at the shop 5 minutes to format the 1TB HDD which had to be a quick format, contrary to popular belief, formatting a HDD does not clean data from a HDD not to mention a "quick" format, all formatting a HDD does is check the HDD for sector errors and mark the data to be over-written as needed, it does not remove data; and how much did he charge you for that?

:) I asked him if it was clean and he said yes but he knows i am a novice..just shows you cant always trust them because they are behind the counter. I dont think it even took a whole 5 mins so like you say it still isnt wiped clean,vista sees nothing on it so i believed him There was no charge maybe because he knew i was in to buy a printer or because i have spent about £2500 in there over two years...i built my pc from barebones (might be an english saying but i dont know) and have picked up stuff for friends
so i should just follow your steps and forget his "blank disc" claim by the look of it.
I wont even install tonite because its gona take hours and i will be asleep but hopefully tomorrow.

If you just connect the printer to the PC in Windows 7 a driver should be automatically added and the printer should start up in just a few minutes; Windows 7 is pretty much driver complete.