Programs on second drive after clean install

Dlee13 · 27 Oct 2014

Hello

I currently have Windows 7 Home Premuium 64 bit installed on my Samsung 120GB SSD and I want to do a clean instal. I have the majority of my programs/games on a separate Western Digital HDD and from what I understand, if I do a clean install on the OS drive then they won't work properly.

If I was to go ahead with the clean install on the OS drive, would I need to reformat the other drive as well or would it be ok to just delete the program folders and reinstall?

gregrocker · 27 Oct 2014

It defeats the purpose of an SSD to put Programs on a slower HD and its best to keep programs on C anyway since they integrate themselves into the OS until uninstalled and should be kept part of the image.

You should be OK to delete the Program Files from the data drive, which should be unplugged during install.

Dlee13 · 28 Oct 2014

gregrocker said:

It defeats the purpose of an SSD to put Programs on a slower HD and its best to keep programs on C anyway since they integrate themselves into the OS until uninstalled and should be kept part of the image.

You should be OK to delete the Program Files from the data drive, which should be unplugged during install.

Depends on the programs though, not all really need the speed boost and its best to leave spare space for future Wimdows updates.

I did the clean install and everything worked out fine thanks!

MightyMiroWD · 28 Oct 2014

Hi there.

I think that your programs (such as Office, Photoshop, etc) will have to be re-installed as the registry entries would be wiped out by the clean installation of Windows. That's because if you were to wipe your C: drive and Windows installation, theoretically you may be able to use the programs on your HDD, but it depends on how those programs were written.

Some programs were developed without the need for registry entries or configuration files that would normally be located on the C: drive. However, these tend to be the more simple programs, such as text editors and more complex programs will require these objects, but some programs will recreate them at launch if they are missing. Typically, they revert to their default settings and any customizations you made would be gone.

Unfortunately, there is no way to know which programs can operate this way...

You could make backup images of your SSD and HDD drives with some program and then wipe your SSD drive, do a clean install and test each program. Depending on the number of applications, that could take a while. If it turned out that too many of the programs did not function, you could then restore your SSD and HDD drives. Obviously, restoring SSD returns your original OS, but restoring HDD would restore any settings that were changed to the HDD drive.

Lastly, I would suggest making several images in the future. Install a fresh copy of Windows and update it. Then take an image. That way, you will always have a clean copy of Windows to restore to. This is much faster than installing. Then install your applications, customizations and updates. Then take a another image. This allows you to restore to an image with your OS and applications in a "clean" state.

Hope this helps and best of luck! :)