I've just fitted an additional 1Tb hard drive to my Dell, which is now sitting alongside my existing 160Gb HDD running XP. It's now showing as 'E' drive in My Computer and is sitting there nice and empty!

The choices I seem to have now are either:
a) Install Windows 7 on the existing HD, overwriting XP
or
b) Install Windows 7 on the new one and move my files from the old drive to the new one

On the microsoft site, I've looked into installing Windows 7 onto the existing drive (replacing XP) and it says I will need to do a custom install, which in short means deleting everything on the existing hard drive. Now I'm thinking it may be easier to install Windows 7 on the new drive, then copy all of my files over and preserve the existing drive with XP on it "just in case" and make the new drive the primary one.

Obviously, I want to save my files, photos etc hence fitting the new hard drive. I've nearly filled the 160Gb drive though, hence the bigger drive fitted.

Whats the best way to do this? 2010 MY Vogue SE TDV8 3.6 Stornoway Grey- fully loaded

I'm sure expert help will be along soon, for me there would be a couple of options. What I did when I swapped my laptop onto an SSD was;

Prep the old drive by either manually exporting your bookmarks address book/ contacts and email archives etc. To smooth this process I think if you google USMT -(user state migration tool) you'll find some help. For me I wanted a clean slate so just exported the basics as above.

Then install the 1TB as the main system drive and clean install all your programs before copying your pics/vids and so on then running USMT to drag your settings back. N.B. That's if you only want 1disk in your PC, or if you doubt the hardware integrity of the original 160GB disk due to age or corruption.

Tbh. I'd not want a 1TB disk as 'system' because if it all goes tits and you need to rebuild then you're in for a LOT of messing. If the above it true and you have doubts about the 160GB drive then at the very least partition the 1TB and separate out 50-100GB for windows and programs.

You could run the USMT and copy all your files including the USMT output onto the new drive. THEN clean install everything program related onto the 160GB and use this as your 'system' disk.

There are myriad ways to facilitate this and none are particularly complex.

Sure some professional help will be along soon!

That way anything goes wrong all your user data on the 1TB is untouched.

Agree with earlier post ^^ ref the size of the system disk. Assuming it's reliable, I'd be inclined to use the 160Gb drive as the system disk and keep the 1Tb for documents, pictures, data.

Windows 7 has a neat "Wizard" called "Windows Easy Transfer". I've used it half a dozen times, it works pretty well, and is a good way to get a complex config out of XP and into Windows 7. It supports all application settings where registry is used to store the config. You can choose what to save / transfer.

One neat feature is that as you reinstall your apps, Office, browsers or whatever, the config for each is applied automatically as you install them. Graham

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antoniasdad wrote:

Windows 7 has a neat "Wizard" called "Windows Easy Transfer". I've used it half a dozen times, it works pretty well, and is a good way to get a complex config out of XP and into Windows 7. It supports all application settings where registry is used to store the config. You can choose what to save / transfer.

One neat feature is that as you reinstall your apps, Office, browsers or whatever, the config for each is applied automatically as you install them.

Are you running any software that will not work on Windows 7 ? Unlikely, and if not it is time to say goodbye to XP. ( Am assuming you have run the windows 7 compatibility app to check that 7 will run on your PC?)

Am with the others about setting your 160GB drive as the OS and using the 1TB drive for data. So copy over all your data (photos, docs, videos, etc). Whilst the Easy Transfer app is good (so say others...) you would be better off doing a clean install of 7, and building it up how you want it, which avoids all the stuff and nonsense that may have built up in XP over time.

However, if you want to hang onto XP, then free up some space on your 1st hard drive, create a new partition, and then install 7 alongside XP. 7 will provide you with a boot menu for 7 or previous version (XP). Easiest partition tool I know is PartedMagic. You can download it here and burn to Cd or create a bootable flash drive. You can get it here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/partedmagic/

My only word of caution, once W7 is installed, only ever use the built in W7 tool to resize the W7 partition.

My second only word of caution - backup, then backup, then backup, but of course, you have already backed up all your precious data to CD/DVD haven't you. .
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+1 for backups Joe!

Joe90 wrote:

Are you running any software that will not work on Windows 7 ? Unlikely, and if not it is time to say goodbye to XP. ( Am assuming you have run the windows 7 compatibility app to check that 7 will run on your PC?)

Am with the others about setting your 160GB drive as the OS and using the 1TB drive for data. So copy over all your data (photos, docs, videos, etc). Whilst the Easy Transfer app is good (so say others...) you would be better off doing a clean install of 7, and building it up how you want it, which avoids all the stuff and nonsense that may have built up in XP over time.

Yes, a drag and drop of the files you want to keep onto the new drive should be fine. You should also do a filesearch on the XP drive for common formats you use like *.jpg, *.doc, *.xls, *.bmp, *.ppt, *.avi, *.flv (not an exhaustive or suggested list), in case stuff ended up somewhere else or buried deep inside My Documents with shortcuts.

Then, please spend some time backing up. Even if you pop out and buy a 320GB USB external drive (£39) to copy all your files to.

Once data is safe, open the CD/DVD tray, pop your W7 DVD into the drive, leave the tray open and restart your PC. Then W7 installation routine should take over. (You may need to check that you PC will boot from a CD/DVD before your XP boots, you'll have to change a setting in the bios if it doesn't) .
Experience is the only genuine knowledge, but as time passes, I have forgotten more than I can remember
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