Upgaded to Win7 - do i have to keep my XP system/disks

I seem to have upgraded sucessfully - a clean install over my 32 bit XP SP3 using Windows & Professional x64 Upgrade disk.

I back up the system regularly using macrium reflect, so i should be OK in the case of a serious problem.

However, if i had to do a clean install after some unforseen catastrophe, how would i go about it? I mean would i do better to keep my old XP on its old SSD (i cloned it before the upgrade) or if not, would i have to keep the XP system disks so i could clean install that first before i used the Upgrade disk? Either way it seems a bit of a pain, but i can see no way around it. Can anyone here, please?

Usually Yes. The EULA specifies that. The need is for proving ownership of a previous version when installing or needing to reinstall.

The Microsoft Software License Terms contain information about the terms and conditions of using Microsoft software. The license terms differ depending on the edition of Windows 7.
To find out which edition of Windows 7 is running on your computer

• Click the Start button , right-click Computer, and then click Properties.
  The edition of Windows 7 you are running is displayed under Windows edition near the top of the window.

To read the license terms

1. Click the Start button , and then, in the Start menu, click Computer.
2. Under Hard Disk Drives, double-click the drive where Windows is installed. This is often the drive labeled (C:).
3. Double-click the Windows folder, double-click the System32 folder, double-click the en-US folder, double-click the Licenses folder, and then double-click the _Default folder.
4. Double-click the folder that corresponds to the edition of Windows 7 that's installed on your computer, and then double-click license.
   The license will open in a new window.

This is the relevant item in the license:
"15. UPGRADES. To use upgrade software, you must first be licensed for the software that is eligible for the upgrade. Upon upgrade, this agreement takes the place of the agreement for the software you upgraded from. After you upgrade, you may no longer use the software you upgraded from."
This was always stressed at the Microsoft seminars I attended, save the qualifying version disc and Product Key.

Yes, has to be a clean install. But the upgrade offered is more for pricing, cheaper for those already running a version of Windows which is why one needs to keep the evidence needed.

Thanks for the replies. I guess i can ditch my XP installation but i'd better not flog my XP disk.

Just to comment on the last post, according to the tutorial by brink, either a clean or custom install is possible. I booted from the upgrade disk and used the custom install option and it worked fine.

NoelDP said:

Doing it that way almost certainly means that you're not going to be able to activate , since the activation 'excape' won't have been triggered as it would have been by starting from inside XP.
Please check that the system is activated, because if not, you'll have to use one of the methods in Brink's Tutorial to get it activated - and that's best done before installing updates. (e.g. the double-install method would mean installing updates and drivers a second time!)

Now i'm confused. The current win7 installation activated smoothly, but you seem to be saying that i won't be able to activate it if i need to reinstall it at some stage without having winXP installed first. This seems 100% at odds with all the other advice (as does RolandJS's) - unless i'm misunderstanding you?