Installed Win 7 Home Premium OEM on wrong HD

Hawker22 · 23 Jan 2012

I got my copy and a new HD. Went to install and did not unplug the old smaller drive and ---you guessed it---put the install onto the wrong drive. I entered the KEY but have not yet activated. It works OK on the second drive but I want it on the new, larger drive. What is the best way to do this? No files to worry about on the new HD. Can I simply reinstall win 7 on the new drive and then can I simply delete the copy on the other drive?
The answer may be somewhere if I did a big search, but it is late and I am heading to bed and hoping for some advice by morning.
Thanks

wanchoo · 23 Jan 2012

I think the best thing to do would be to delete the OS from the old Drive by boot time reformatting and clean installing it on the new HDD.

I think there would have been no problem doing this even if you had activated the OS by explaining the position by phone to Microsoft if Internet activation did not work and there is even less hassle now with the OS not yet activated..

whs · 23 Jan 2012

As long as the current OS is still on the other drive, chances are that your bootmgr will also end up there. And even without the OS there, it can happen if the smaller drive has the lower port number.

You can avoid that if you unplug the smaller drive when you install again. Or, if you do not like the gymnastics, you can fix it later with EasyBCD. Bootmgr - Move to C:\ with EasyBCD

A completely different approach would be to make an image of your current installation and restore that to the bigger drive. That may be worthwhile if you have already done a lot of updates and installed programs.

Hawker22 · 24 Jan 2012

Thanks guys. I took the suggestion of unplugging my old-smaller- HD and did another win 7 install onto my new HD. That worked OK(at least so far).
NOW, what is the best way to get the first install off of my old HD? Can I simply delete the win 7 folder, or does it involve something more sinister?
Not quite sure about the boot format thingy--I have other files on the smaller drive that I need to preserve, so will it format just the Win 7 partition, and if so, can I then access that partition.
Thanks

whs · 24 Jan 2012

1. Look at your bigger disk (in Disk Management) with the new installation. There should be a C: partition and a 100MB active system partition. Alternatively C: may be the active partition. If that is the case

2. Delete the whole old OS partition from the smaller disk - with Disk Management. And if there is also a small 100MB partition, delete that too. The gained freespace you can use for the creation of a new partition or add it to one of the existing partitions there. But that may be a bit tricky if that freespace is to the left of the existing partitions.. You better post a picture of your disk management first so that we can have a look.

gregrocker · 24 Jan 2012

When you plug back in the smaller HD make sure the larger one is set first to boot in BIOS setup, and you are booted into the one you want to keep which will be listed as Boot in Disk management.

Open an Elevated Command Prompt to use Diskpart Clean Command to wipe the smaller HD. Again confirm it's the right one by size.

Hawker22 · 24 Jan 2012

Hopefully, I have been able to post a screenshot of my disk management data.
Looks like there is no system partition on my smaller HD.
What now?

whs · 24 Jan 2012

But that screenshot looks like everything is OK. Your system is on the larger HDD as you wanted it and if it works, you are fine.

Hawker22 · 24 Jan 2012

Except that I still have two OS's on my smaller drive that I want gone. One is win 7 and the other is win 7 old. Can I simply now just delete those. They are taking up at least 24 GB of space.

whs · 24 Jan 2012

I don't see an OS on the smaller drive. But maybe the whole drive is an OS with accompanying data.

The Windows.old is probably a folder that you could delete. But no need to do that if you do the next step.

For the OS in that single partition, that is a bit trickier. I would backup all data in that partition that you care to keep. Then I would delete the whole partition (with Disk Management) and make a new partition from the unallocated space to where you can restore the saved data.

If you do not have an external drive for the temporary backup, shrink the C: partition on the big drive and make a temporary partition to hold the backup data. Make it big enough that all data that you will backup will fit.