Two hardrives in same PC with different OS? How does that work?

[I WANT MY GIFS]

I plan to install Windows 7 Home Premium when I get my new HDD I ordered & want this as my main OS.

Thing is, I have a buggy Windows 7 Ultimate on my current harddrive (been crashing & giving me all sorts of problems) & I don't want it anymore.

I want to install Home Premium in the new drive & remove the old drive, but I still want to use my older hard drive as a backup inside my PC.

How will my system know which OS is running if there are two PC's with different OS inside? Does the order they are connected matter for the PC to recognize the main HDD & that corresponding OS?

Will this give me problems & will I be forced to format the old drive with Ultimate in it?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

You say the Ultimate installation is buggy. Why have a buggy installation as a backup?

You say you want to "remove the old drive". In the next sentence you say you want to leave it inside your PC. So, I'm not clear on what you want to do.

If you had two Windows drives in a PC, you'd choose which to boot via a boot menu that you'd be presented with every time the PC started.

You say you don't want the Ultimate installation. If that's true, why not get rid of it? And then make an image of your new Home Premium installation and store it on the drive now containing Ultimate. If the Home Premium installation fails, you restore the image of it.

Clarification needed.

 

[tjg79]

How many hours on your "old" hdd? You should check the S.M.A.R.T. data. You can do it easily with the GSmartControl Utility. Your "old" hdd may be failing and if so, should be replaced or removed at the least. If the S.M.A.R.T. data is good, you should do a full erase and reformat. What is the make of your "old" hdd? If it's a Seagate drive, use SeaTools for DOS to test the drive and do a full erase. If the drive media is failing, it will cause your Win 7 Ultimate to be buggy.

Your system specs are too vague to give you more specific advice.

Yes, you can control which drive boots with the Windows Boot Manager or the motherboard BIOS.

I think you're better off with clean install of Win 7 Ultimate on a new or sound hdd. I wouldn't downgrade the OS.

Regards

 

[I WANT MY GIFS]

You say the Ultimate installation is buggy. Why have a buggy installation as a backup?

You say you want to "remove the old drive". In the next sentence you say you want to leave it inside your PC. So, I'm not clear on what you want to do.

I meant, I would remove my current HDD & place the new one in & instal Home Premium on it.
Afterwards, I want to put my old HDD back in to use as a secondary drive.

So, my PC will ask me which to boot from every time I start it?
I guess I'll have to reformat it then.

How many hours on your "old" hdd? You should check the S.M.A.R.T. data. You can do it easily with the GSmartControl Utility. Your "old" hdd may be failing and if so, should be replaced or removed at the least. If the S.M.A.R.T. data is good, you should do a full erase and reformat. What is the make of your "old" hdd? If it's a Seagate drive, use SeaTools for DOS to test the drive and do a full erase. If the drive media is failing, it will cause your Win 7 Ultimate to be buggy.

Your system specs are too vague to give you more specific advice.

Yes, you can control which drive boots with the Windows Boot Manager or the motherboard BIOS.

I think you're better off with clean install of Win 7 Ultimate on a new or sound hdd. I wouldn't downgrade the OS.

Regards

Why not downgrade?
Everything I read, Ultimate has features for business & whatnot. I don't need any of that & if anything those extra feature might be degrading the overall performance, wouldn't it?
My HDD is a Western Digital 500GB 7200rpm drive. System is a AMD 64-bit 8GB ram & have a 3GB GPU.



BTW do any of you guys know if using a Windows 7 Ultimate product key will work with Windows & Home Premium install disk?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Everything I read, Ultimate has features for business & whatnot. I don't need any of that & if anything those extra feature might be degrading the overall performance, wouldn't it?
My HDD is a Western Digital 500GB 7200rpm drive. System is a AMD 64-bit 8GB ram & have a 3GB GPU.



BTW do any of you guys know if using a Windows 7 Ultimate product key will work with Windows & Home Premium install disk?

The Ultimate key will NOT activate the Home Premium installation.

Ultimate will not degrade performance. It just has features that are useless to you.

If you have a buggy Ultimate installation, it will be a buggy backup. I'm not clear on why you would want a buggy backup when you could have a good backup of your upcoming Home Premium installation. To each his own.

 

[I WANT MY GIFS]

Everything I read, Ultimate has features for business & whatnot. I don't need any of that & if anything those extra feature might be degrading the overall performance, wouldn't it?
My HDD is a Western Digital 500GB 7200rpm drive. System is a AMD 64-bit 8GB ram & have a 3GB GPU.



BTW do any of you guys know if using a Windows 7 Ultimate product key will work with Windows & Home Premium install disk?

The Ultimate key will NOT activate the Home Premium installation.

Ultimate will not degrade performance. It just has features that are useless to you.

If you have a buggy Ultimate installation, it will be a buggy backup. I'm not clear on why you would want a buggy backup when you could have a good backup of your upcoming Home Premium installation. To each his own.

Sounds about right.
I'll delete it completely.


Don't know why my version of Ultimate is so buggy, a bad driver or a failed update install, but it has been causing me headaches for the past week.

I also tried looking online to see what feature & programs from Ultimate that I can turn off so it can be like Home Premium, but couldn't find any list anywhere.

 

[tjg79]

You might "need" a new hdd, but you won't know unless you check the drive's health by viewing the S.M.A.R.T. data. I don't think you need a new OS. Yes, Ultimate has some features that you may not need, but Professional has features that you could likely use that are included on Ultimate and not on Home Premium. So, I would keep the Ultimate, because it won't degrade overall performance. I wouldn't buy anything less than Professional if you insist on buying an new OS.

Check the Western Digital website to see if there are any utilities that can read the S.M.A.R.T. data and check the hdd media. Your problems could be due to a failing hdd. Also, I think a clean install of Ultimate on a new or fully tested "old" hdd would resolve your "buggy" issues. You should have a second hdd installed for backups and system images.

Regards

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I also tried looking online to see what feature & programs from Ultimate that I can turn off so it can be like Home Premium, but couldn't find any list anywhere.

Here's a list:

You don't turn off unwanted features. You ignore them.


BitLocker, BitLocker To Go, AppLocker, Direct Access, Branche Cache, MUI language packs, boot from VHD.


Domain join, Remote Desktop host, location aware printing, EFS, Mobility Center, Presentation Mode, Offline Folders, Group Policy (GP) controls, advanced backup, XP Mode, support for 192 GB of RAM, and support for 2 CPU sockets.

 

[AddRAM]

Get that old hard drive out of the computer, put it on a shelf and forget about it for now.

Put the new hard drive in when you get it, and install windows on it.

What Windows version do you have a key for ?

Install that on the new hard drive.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1649-clean-install-windows-7-a.html

 

[I WANT MY GIFS]

How many hours on your "old" hdd? You should check the S.M.A.R.T. data. You can do it easily with the GSmartControl Utility. Your "old" hdd may be failing and if so, should be replaced or removed at the least. If the S.M.A.R.T. data is good, you should do a full erase and reformat. What is the make of your "old" hdd? If it's a Seagate drive, use SeaTools for DOS to test the drive and do a full erase. If the drive media is failing, it will cause your Win 7 Ultimate to be buggy.

Your system specs are too vague to give you more specific advice.

Yes, you can control which drive boots with the Windows Boot Manager or the motherboard BIOS.

I think you're better off with clean install of Win 7 Ultimate on a new or sound hdd. I wouldn't downgrade the OS.

Regards

I ran GSmartControl

smartctl 5.41 2011-06-09 r3365 [i686-w64-mingw32-win7(64)-sp1] (sf-win32-5.41-1)
Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Western Digital Caviar Blue Serial ATA
Device Model:     WDC WD5000AAKX-22ERMA0
Serial Number:    WD-WCC2EXR27980
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 209e00971
Firmware Version: 17.01H17
User Capacity:    500,107,862,016 bytes [500 GB]
Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   8
ATA Standard is:  Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is:    Wed Aug 13 13:10:22 2014 PDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x05)    Offline data collection activity
                    was aborted by an interrupting command from host.
                    Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0)    The previous self-test routine completed
                    without error or no self-test has ever 
                    been run.
Total time to complete Offline 
data collection:         ( 8580) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:              (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
                    Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
                    Suspend Offline collection upon new
                    command.
                    Offline surface scan supported.
                    Self-test supported.
                    Conveyance Self-test supported.
                    Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003)    Saves SMART data before entering
                    power-saving mode.
                    Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01)    Error logging supported.
                    General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine 
recommended polling time:      (   2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:      (  87) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time:      (   5) minutes.
SCT capabilities:            (0x3037)    SCT Status supported.
                    SCT Feature Control supported.
                    SCT Data Table supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   143   141   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       3833
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       150
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       855
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       144
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       85
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       576
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   107   085   000    Old_age   Always       -       36
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       1
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Short offline       Completed without error       00%       855         -
# 2  Short offline       Completed without error       00%       855         -

SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
 SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
    1        0        0  Not_testing
    2        0        0  Not_testing
    3        0        0  Not_testing
    4        0        0  Not_testing
    5        0        0  Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
  After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.

I was able to find the product keys on my PC through a program for the installed Windows 7 Ultimate & I also have a OEM product sticker for Windows 7 Home Premium on a broken PC.
Thing is, I only have the Windows 7 Home install disc on me.

I also don't have a DVD burner, so I can't download the free legal .ISO for it either.

 

[tjg79]

Your hard disc S.M.A.R.T. data looks good. The disc only has 855 hours. You should run a short test and long test as well. If Western Digital has a utility to do a full erase or low level type format (old terminology), then you should run that also. I would just test the disc, do a full erase and then perform a clean install per the tutorial link posted above with what ever version of Win 7 you have with a good COA. You shouldn't have any issues if you follow the tutorial. A clean install resolves a lot of issues and gives you a good as new pc.

You can use this disc as a system backup drive if you get the new disc. This disc is barely broken in.

You should get a good DVD burner (internal if you've got the space). They don't cost that much and they're very useful.

 

[mjf]

If you have a valid key for Ultimate I don't know why you didn't simply do a clean install to fix the "buggy" nature of the current installation.

If for some reason you want to install Home Premium on a new HDD then use the "old" HDD for data then disconnect the old HDD, connect the new HDD to the original sata port and do a clean install using your Home Premium install DVD. Connect your old HDD and format it after backing up data. Am I missing something? Then you end up with a spare Windows Ultimate key

 

[I WANT MY GIFS]

If you have a valid key for Ultimate I don't know why you didn't simply do a clean install to fix the "buggy" nature of the current installation.

If for some reason you want to install Home Premium on a new HDD then use the "old" HDD for data then disconnect the old HDD, connect the new HDD to the original sata port and do a clean install using your Home Premium install DVD. Connect your old HDD and format it after backing up data. Am I missing something? Then you end up with a spare Windows Ultimate key

I have a disc with Home 7 on it that someone ripped for me from awhile ago, but I don't have a disc with Windows 7 Ultimate, so I can't reinstall it.
I also can't rip a legal .ISO of Ultimate from the web, as I do not have a DVD burner, just a DVD player on my PC.

The going rate on new Windows 7 discs are $80+ used.

As far as I know Ultimate product keys won't work on activating Home Premium?

 

[mjf]

If you have a valid Windows 7 Ultimate key then it's valuable property IMO. You can install from a USB provided you have a valid ISO. I'm not sure what the recommended download site is at the moment (be careful where you get it). Someone else here may know.
You can use option one of this tutorial
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2432-usb-windows-7-installation-key-drive-create.html

 

[gregrocker]

Everything needed is here to do a perfect http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/219487-clean-reinstall-factory-oem-windows-7-a.html#post1839164 which steps are the same for retail.

Use the HD you have which is fine, and the WIn7 version that you own a license for. The latest official installer and tool to burn to DVD or flash stick is in the tutorial.

Home premium which came with another PC will not work on any but that other PC.

You will get and keep a perfect install of Win7 to the exact extent you stick with the steps in the tutorial.

 

[tjg79]

I have a disc with Home 7 on it that someone ripped for me from awhile ago, but I don't have a disc with Windows 7 Ultimate, so I can't reinstall it.

Who's the manufacturer of your computer? From what you indicated so far, it appears you have a pc that came installed with Win 7 Ultimate. So, you should have a valid key for Win 7 Ultimate. Contact the manufacturer and obtain a replacement Win 7 Ultimate disc or contact Microsoft to inquire about a replacement disc since you've got a legal COA. If you have the disc, you've got more options when it comes time to resolve issues.

Information on the link below may be useful.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...ucts-and/fb8230d4-000f-4ee7-b732-c9f8fff28bfd