Older hard drive worry

[lenberman]

My Windows 7 computer is 4 years old. I am worried that my 500 GB hard drive is old and 75% full and I'd like to upgrade to a 1 TB drive. When I bought the Lenovo H415 it did not come with a re-install disk and there is no recovery partition. How do I setup a new drive? I don't want to clone my drive over because there may be malware or just junk that I don't want on my new drive. I hope that I don't have to buy a new W7 system disk.

Len

 

[Sir George]

My Windows 7 computer is 4 years old. I am worried that my 500 GB hard drive is old and 75% full and I'd like to upgrade to a 1 TB drive. When I bought the Lenovo H415 it did not come with a re-install disk and there is no recovery partition. How do I setup a new drive? I don't want to clone my drive over because there may be malware or just junk that I don't want on my new drive. I hope that I don't have to buy a new W7 system disk.

Len

Be sure you have your product key available so you can activate the new install. You can obtain Windows 7 OS from the following link;

Official Windows 7 SP1 ISO from Digital River « My Digital Life

Download the same version that is currently on your system.

 

[marsmimar]

You say you don't want to clone your old drive because there may be malware or junk on it. When moving to a larger hard drive I think that's the quickest way to do it. You could always run multiple malware scans on the old drive to search for and remove viruses, spyware, etc. In addition to running a full scan with your own installed anti-virus of choice you could also run scans with these free products: Malwarebytes, ESET Online Scanner, SuperAntispyware, Comodo Cleaning Essentials, etc just to name a few.

And you could always manually remove old programs you no longer use and any other "junk" you don't want. Another free tool that might help you decide what to remove is called PC Decrapifier.

Once you've run your malware scans and removed junk, you could use the free Macrium Reflect to move everything from your old hard drive to the new one. One of the Forum experts prepared a tutorial on how to use Macrium.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73828-imaging-free-macrium.html

If you want to get a totally clean start you could consider a clean install on the new hard drive. Another Forum expert prepared a tutorial that also explains how to obtain a legal installation disk.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/219487-clean-reinstall-factory-oem-windows-7-a.html

 

[lenberman]

Thank you both for your solid answers to my question. I am tempted to do the imaging solution but I have always heard that the system should be rebuilt every few years just to clean out all the "bit-rot". How do I find out my product key?

Thanks,
Len

 

[Sir George]

Thank you both for your solid answers to my question. I am tempted to do the imaging solution but I have always heard that the system should be rebuilt every few years just to clean out all the "bit-rot". How do I find out my product key?

Thanks,
Len

See the following link;

How To Find Your Windows 7 Product Key [Easy, 5 Min]

 

[whs]

A clean install is certainly a good idea - if you don;t mind the effort involved. Greg's tutorial is an excellent guide for that. But make an image of your current installation. That image you can always mount in case you forgot something. It is just a precaution.