Windows 7

[RickyTick]

Let me ask a hypothetical question.

I run Vista 64-bit, and it's on my single hard drive (WD Caviar SE16 500gb).

What if I wanted to add another hard drive, and install Windows 7 on it when its available. Could I do that and then just move software from one drive to the other and not loose anything? If so, would I then be able to use the 500gb HD for storage?

I have plenty of case room (Antec 900), and plenty of psu wattage (Corsair HX620)

Any thoughts or suggestions?

[The Wise Monkey]

When you install a piece of software, it writes things to the registry as well, so you wouldn't be able to just copy and paste the folders from Program Files.

You could just do an upgrade from Vista to 7, or do you plan to dual boot them?

[RickyTick]

Not really interested in a dual boot.

Just want to replace my current hard drive with a new one that has Windows 7 on it. Then I would theoritically move my software to the new drive (or re-install) and use the old one as storage, if that's possible. And if so, would I be able to rename the new drive as C: and essentially start over.

And would my wife be able to store things on my extra drive since we are on a home network.

[chunkylover53]

I'm gonna take a stab at it... curious to see what WM comes back with.

Option 1: Upgrade Vista to Windows 7, no need to move software, buy another drive and add it to your PC, log into windows and format the new disk through disk manager, set your shares in network settings to share (read & write) that drive, both you and the wife can use it for storage.

Option 2: Assuming you can get your hands on a full install of Windows 7, then you have to take the old disk out and put a new disk in, pretty much start all over again like a new PC with loading windows, drivers, and all of your software, once it's up and running you shut down and put the old disk back in, and here's where I'm not sure. I think once you have designated the new drive as the C drive and loaded windows, my assumption is that when you add the old one back in windows will pick up the old one as if you plugged in an external drive or USB stick and give it a different drive letter like E or F. All of your data should be there, you move what you want over to the new drive, then either delete the disk or reformat it to clean it completely. Then share the disk through network settings as above.

But again, curious to see if that's accurate.