I have noticed in many places people saying that the HDD should be disconnected when installing win7 on an ssd disk - is there a reason for doing this? And what would happen if the HD was not disconnected when windows is installed on the ssd?
Depending on the port allocations for the HDD(s) and SSD, you risk to get your bootmgr to be installed on the HDD. The installer seems to grab the first disk if finds to install the bootmgr. Has happened to me - and other people.
It is really not convenient to have such a configuration. You cannot delete the HDD partition with the bootmgr and e.g. Windows imaging would image that partition along with C (because it contains a system file). So disconnecting the HDD(s) is a good idea.
I've always disconnected extra drives when installing any OS. It eliminates the possibility of accidentally installing on the wrong drive (like a data drive, oops!). It's just a smart thing to do, IMHO.
Add me to the list of "other people". Ended up pulling everything except the DVD and SSD. After the Windows install, I then installed all the other peripherals one at a time. Get a working system going then add to it. Windows will create a new SID with each hardware change. If you change more than about three items at a time, it may trigger a re-certification. Installing peripherals one at a time also makes problems easy to find on a new build, if necessary.
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