Windows 7: Windows 7 + Vista Advice needed please

Helo.... i had Vista on a 500gb drive and i bought a 1tb+ widows 7 +extra ram. But i forgot to buy a splitter to power the new drive I really wanted to install windows7 the day i bought it so i removed the drive with vista and installed windows7 on the new 1tb. The pc now boots at warp speed and sees all the ram
I now have the splitter so i can put the drive with vista back in but i dont know what to expect when i first boot and how to delete vista. Will the pc boot windows 7 even tho the slave has vista installed? or can i just put the drive with vista in then try deleting vista? if you can delete vista easily?? I have various applications on the vista drive which i would like to keep without having to reinstall them but its not the end of the world if i have to.Also would i benefit from partitioning the 1tb that has windows7 and can that be done with Windows 7 already installed?
Any advice you can give me would be really appreciated

You can install the old drive. Since you are currently booting from the new drive the machine will still boot from that drive as long as you don't change the boot order in the BIOS.

The best way to remove Vista from that drive would be to format it. It's not practical to recover the installed applications, especially since they've been installed to work with Vista. If you have any data (pics, vids, docs, etc...) you should copy it to the new drive before formatting the old. You will want to reinstall your apps in Win 7.

Another possibility is to use both drives to boot either Win 7 or Vista by changing the boot order in the BIOS.

This is how I would do it

Plug in the Vista drive as a 2nd device, just like "strollin" said... win 7 should boot w/o a problem.

Once you are on the Win 7 desktop, I would proceed to Re-format the Vista drive.

+1 on NOT trying to save the Applications, just make sure you backup any Documents, Pictures, Saved Games so you don't loose those and they can now be on your new Win 7 drive.

Once the drive is formatted, you can now use it as a back up or whatever, even though, with a 1TB drive, I just can't see why you would bother having another drive in the PC but hey... to each his own, right?

Thankyou
I have never had to format but i presume its easy. I have loads of vids of my kids on that drive and tons of music/media which i shall move first. Should i partition the new drive or is there no benefit to doing so?
Thanks for any replies

Hello liam72, welcome to Seven Forums!



Have a look at these tutorials at the links below, it's better to have separate partitions to move the data to first.

Partition or Volume - Shrink

Partition or Volume - Create New



After you have moved all the data you want to keep from the old Hard Disk Drive (HDD) have a look at this one, it's better than a format as formats don't remove data they just mark said data to be over-written as needed.

SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Reinstallation

There was a time when i thought 500gb would last me forever but i bought the 1tb because the 3 other drives totaling 1.3tb are nearly full so the new 1tb will only last so long. I am always making hi-def vids of the kids (every day) and have tons of HQ music/blu-ray which all seems to consume lots of gb. I have all my dvd/vhs home vids going back to 1989 on the pc and am thinking how to get round the "i only have space for 4 drives in the pc problem" ...New bigger case i suppose
Thanks for replies

You may also need/want to start a backup plan; have a look at these.


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Thankyou im very gratefull

You're welcome, did you see my post #5 above?

Im gona look now...