Windows 7 over XP

[soundklinik]

Greetings everybody, my first post here...
I am still on XP-SP3 and just bought W-7 64bits.

My question is this: I have XP on a Samsung disc on C, 80GB partition.
I bought a new Western Digital disc. I want to install W7 on the new WD disc and get rid off XP, which is on the Samsung disc and recuperate that C partition.

I could unplug the Sata cable to Samsung disc and install W-7 on WD?
How do I go about the UN-installation of XP?
is there a better way to do all this?
TIA

 

[Corazon]

It depends - it's not clear what you want to do with the two harddisks. Do you want to add the WD drive to your system or replace the Samsung drive with it?

The safest way would be to connect your WD and disconnect the Samsung, then proceed with installing Windows 7 on the WD drive.
After it's up and running, disconnect the WD and reconnect the Samsung. Then boot the Windows setup DVD again and go to the command prompt. Use diskpart and the clean command to remove all boot information from the Samsung drive and essentially destroy Windows XP.

Once that's done, you can either reconnect the WD or connect both drives, boot your new Windows 7, and create and format a new partition on the Samsung to use it for data storage or backups.

 

[soundklinik]

Thank you Corazon for a speedy and precise answer.
I should have been clearer on the discs.
I want to add the new WD disc, partition it in two: C:/200GB programs and D:/ 300GB backups, storage music films.
The 2nd old disc, (also 500GB), for audio samples and sample banks only.
So I will end up with 2 physical 500GB discs

This is the interesting part:

After it's up and running, disconnect the WD and reconnect the Samsung. Then boot the Windows setup DVD again and go to the command prompt. Use diskpart and the clean command to remove all boot information from the Samsung drive and essentially destroy Windows XP.

Scares me a bit...

Thanx for your help

 

[Corazon]

Sorry if I went over your head with the diskpart stuff. The following tutorial should answer all your questions in detail:

www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1649-clean-install-windows-7-a.html

 

[whs]

Disconnect the old disk > install W7 on the new disk > reconnect the old disk > boot into W7 > delete the XP partition on the old disk in Disk Management - or reformat the old disk.

 

[essenbe]

Disconnect the old disk > install W7 on the new disk > reconnect the old disk > boot into W7 > delete the XP partition on the old disk in Disk Management - or reformat the old disk.

That will work good, but be sure to change boot order in bios to tell it which drive to boot from.

 

[whs]

Disconnect the old disk > install W7 on the new disk > reconnect the old disk > boot into W7 > delete the XP partition on the old disk in Disk Management - or reformat the old disk.

That will work good, but be sure to change boot order in bios to tell it which drive to boot from.

Thanks for adding that. One always assumes too much.

 

[rraod]

I would like to add here.

After reconnecting the old disk, boot in to windows 7 from new disk, you have two options.

Backup all the valid data from the old disk, C: (80GB) and remaining partition(s) (~400-420GB) to the new disk's second partition (D:?), then from disk management, remove all the old disk's partitions and create just one partition and format it to NTFS.

or

Backup all the valid data from the old disk's C: and mark it not active and format it to NTFS.

 

[soundklinik]

Thank you all for your help.

I want to recuperate the C partition from the old disc, (now w. XP), reformat it and use it, if I am not mistaken, the first part of an HD is the fastest.

As per partitioning the NEW disc, I plan 200GB for W7 and 300GB for documents, storage etc. and I want to keep only programs, nothing else on the 200GB partition. Isn't 200 GB a bit too large? Or it doesn't really matter?

And thanks for the link to the tutorials...very useful
cheers

 

[rraod]

It depends on what programs and how many programs you wish to install. I feel 100GB is fair enough for windows 7. You will need more space on your second partition for data. Usually people run out of space soon on the data partition.

Otherwise you can keep 200GB for C: and in future you run out of space on the 300GB partition, you can always shrink the C: partition and grow the 300GB partition.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

As per partitioning the NEW disc, I plan 200GB for W7 and 300GB for documents, storage etc. and I want to keep only programs, nothing else on the 200GB partition. Isn't 200 GB a bit too large? Or it doesn't really matter?

200 GB is probably unnecessarily large UNLESS you install a bunch of games on C. They tend to take up a lot of space.

An ordinary Windows 7 installation with 20 or 30 random applications is probably under 40 GB. I don't often hear of even 100 GB being used unless a lot of games are involved.

 

[gregrocker]

Once you install Win7 to the new HD you can also plug back in the old HD, then once you're sure you have everything off of it or don't need to boot XP any longer open an Elevated Command Prompt to run the Diskpart Clean command exactly as given here: Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command

Don't worry, it won't let you Clean the Win7 HD!

Then you can open Win7 Disk Management and it will let you partition the old HD as you want: Partition or Volume - Create New

 

[soundklinik]

Thanks a bunch everyone.
I have one more question, because my plans have changed slightly, due to incompetent "professional" ebay sellers who sold me each in turn 500GB Caviar blue HD and one week later I got refunds 2 days apart. (they had 200 and 45 pcs in stock!!) So it goes...
Meanwhile a friend was telling me that I should get an SSD and I found one in my budget, I found 30GB PCI slot.
My question is Is 30 GB enough just for W-7?
All my music software take little space, NO sound libraries etc...
If it is not enough, I can go back to XP but I want to put XP on the SSD, which will create a problem? 2XP on 2 discs?

See it here:
Nocti MSATA - 30 Go - SATA II disque dur OCZ Technology - GrosBill.com

Specs:
Capacity: 30GB
MLC NAND Flash
Native TRIM support
Temps d'accès : .1ms
Design Ultra-Slim : 30 x 50 x 3.5mm
Operating Temp: 0°C ~ 70°C
Ambient Temp: 0°C ~ 55°C
Storage Temp: -45°C ~ 85°C
Low Power Consumption: 1.7W Active, 0.5W Idle
Compatible : Windows XP, Vista, 7 32-bit and 64-bit
MTBF: 2 millions hours
Max Read: up to 280 MB/s
Max Write: up to 255 MB/s
Random Write 4k: 12,500 IOPS
Are those specs good for an SSD?

TIA, and good evening everyone.

 

[gregrocker]

I would not want an SSD that small to run Win7 with its programs, and I would not want to move programs to a slower HDD to defeat an SSD's purpose.

Let's see what others think.

 

[essenbe]

I agree with Greg. I would go fo at least a 64GB. That is what I have and am currently using 30GB with user files and games on a spinner. 64GB is plenty if you manage it right.

 

[rraod]

30GB for a SSD is too small for Windows 7. Initially you may be able to fit in the Windows 7, but you will run out of space very soon. Like Greg said it will defeat the purpose of going for a SSD.

In my system (no SSD and a spinner with 640GB), I allocated 80GB for C: with typical space usage values for OS (approx 17.5GB), applications folder (approx 9.75GB), Users folders (approx 0.7GB), pagefile (approx 3GB) and a breathing space on C: drive. I don't have any heavy applications except for MS Office 2003 and Adobe Acrobat 9.0.

A 30GB SSD should be OK for Windows XP but not for Windows 7. I was managing with a 20GB partition comfortably for windows XP earlier but now my C: partition with windows 7 is 80GB with about 33GB already used.

I recommend you to have a comfortable size of about 80-100GB for a SSD.

 

[soundklinik]

Yes you're right, I googled around and 30GB just isn't enough, and I would probably regret it in a few months...
And plus "they" say that an SSD should not be "full", max 60-70%...
A 60GB is a couple bucks more...

Cheers and thanx for help