Want to do clean install of W7 Ultimate and W10 on my Gateway PC

Background

I purchased a 64-bit Gateway DX4831 Desktop (specifications below) with Windows 7 Home Premium six or seven years ago.

Three circumstances arose at about the same time:

1. From the moment I subscribed for Dropbox's cloud storage, I have been plagued by minor inconveniences and a repeated need for information on the functionality, reliance and speed of data transfer and storage to where I have so many minor complaints and unanswered and unasked questions that I decided I must find (a) another more reliable cloud storage provider for easy access to my files, and (b) a more secure place to keep a second copy of my family's pictures, videos, tax and business documents, etcetera. (Only my need for secure storage relates to this post. Lambasting Dropbox was included because quite simply, they deserve it!)
   
2. My seven-year old PC was operating incredibly slow. (It was taking four-five seconds for a Windows Explorer pop-up menu to become visible after clicking on it and I found myself typing five or more words, not letters, ahead of the PC's ability to display them on the screen.)
   
3. My OE hard drive was spinning non-stop and rattling and grinding all the time.

After performing some GRAS maintenance and some maintenance techniques I learned from this forum, the PC speed and responsiveness have improved dramatically, the hard drive spins like it had been before I began experiencing problems and does not rattle and grind.

As a result, I am planning to install 2 1-TB hard drives (specs below) in order to:

• Provide a safe repository for my family's electronic memories and mission critical documents in addition to having them readily available at any cloud storage provider other than Dropbox,
  
• Minimize reliance on my seven-year old hard drive about which I am now leary, and
  
• Allow me to run both Windows 7 Ultimate and Windows 10 on my machine.

My Request

While I was able to find the SevenForums tutorials on performing a clean install, I was not able to find any advice on running W7 and W10 on one machine and if advisable, tutorials on how to do it.

If someone could point me in the direction of some tutorials or tutorial-like information or provide me with some instructions or assistance, I would be indebted to you.

Thanks!

Joe


New Hard Drive Specifications
Capacity: 1TB
Interface: SATA 6Gb/s
RPM Class: 7200
Advanced Format (AF): Yes
RoHS compliant: Yes
Cache: 64 MB
Rotational speed: 7200 RPM Class
Data transfer rate (max.)
Buffer to host: 6 Gb/s
Host to/from drive (sustained): 150 MB/s



Computer Profile Summary
Courtesy of Belarc Advisor and Speccy

Computer
Gateway DX4831 Desktop

Operating System
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium (x64) Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)
Installed: 10/10/2015 12:57:09 PM
Boot Mode: BIOS (Secure Boot not supported)

Processor
Intel Core i3 530 @ 2.93GHz 32 °C
Clarkdale 32nm Technology
Primary memory cache: 64 kilobyte
Secondary memory cache: 256 kilobyte
Tertiary memory cache: 4096 kilobyte
64-bit ready
Multi-core (2 total)
Hyper-threaded (4 total)

Main Circuit Board
Board: Gateway H57M01 (CPU 1) 40 °C
Bus Clock: 133 megahertz
BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. P01-B1 03/23/2010

Drives
881.28 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
255.79 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space
HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH41N [Optical drive]
Western Digital WDC WD10EADS-22M2B0 (SATA) 42 °C [Hard drive] (1 GB) -- drive 0, s/n WD- WCAV56802417, rev 01.00A01, SMART Status: Healthy

Two 1-TB Western Digital Hard Drives (Model: WD10EZEX) with the following specifications will be installed prior to clean OS installation:

Memory Modules
6 GB Usable Installed Memory
Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 664MHz (9-9-9-24)
Slot 'DIMM0' has 2048 MB
Slot 'DIMM1' has 1024 MB
Slot 'DIMM2' has 2048 MB
Slot 'DIMM3' has 1024 MB

Local Drive Volumes
c: (NTFS on drive 0); 881.28 GB; 255.79 GB free

Network Drives
None detected

Controllers
Intel(R) PCH SATA AHCI Controller

Display
Intel HD Graphics [Display adapter]
HX2000 (1600x900@59Hz) [Monitor] (19.9"vis, s/n C180C0114009, February 2010)

Miultimedia
Intel Display Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio

Bus Adapters
JMicron JMB36X Controller
Intel(R) 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller - 3B34
Intel(R) 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller - 3B3C

This is what I would do:
- Buy a SSD. You have no idea what a SSD can do for your computer. Boots 6x faster and opens programs at a blink of an eye.

As you have a desktop you don't need a big SSD.
Mine is 120G and has Win7 and Lubuntu. I have this SSD and it cost only US$ 50 PNY CS1311 2.5" 120GB SATA III TLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SSD7CS1311-120-RB-Newegg.com
The trick is to move \Users to the HDD. And it works perfect.

1)
Let's say that your favorite Windows is Win 7.
- Disconnect all other disks from MB leaving only the SSD.
- Do a clean Win7 install. Clean Install Windows 7
- Connect one new 1T disk and move \Users to it. Download the needed files https://www.sevenforums.com/attachmen...d-relocate.zip
- Connect the actual disk and copy all your data to the new 1T disk (D:)

2)
- Disconnect all other disks from MB leaving only the actual disk.
- Do a clean Win10 install, deleting all partitions - Windows 10 - Clean Install - Windows 10 Tutorials.

Use this SATA order:
SATA 0 - SSD (win7)
SATA 1 - actual HDD (win10)
SATA 2 - Win7 data disk
SATA 3 - second data disk

To choose from what disk you want to boot from use the boot menu (F12?)

Thanks!

Sounds like a great plan!

Joe

Thank you very much!

I will let you know how it goes.

Joe