hypothetical

[RickyTick]

OK, so I want to make sure my thought process is correct. This is a semi-hypothetical senario. :)

Let's say my hard drive crashed. Here's what I think I would do after purchasing a new HD. (old drive was running Vista 64-bit SP2 and I have the original sytems builder disc.

1. Download Windows 7 to a DVD.
2. Physically remove old hard drive, and install new one in it's place.
3. Set bios to boot from floppy first.
4. Win 7 will format new drive and make partition and load Win 7.
5. Done

Should I load my Vista on the new drive first, and then download win 7?

[The Wise Monkey]

Why boot from floppy first? Do you mean boot from the DVD to install 7 on the new HD?

It would be just like starting from scratch, as long as you don't have a RAID setup.

[RickyTick]

OK, so not hypothetically speaking, here's what I got. :D

I bought a new hard drive. The WD 640gb Caviar Black. It was on sale, and I just couldn't pass it up. Plus it's just bigger, better, faster than my Caviar SE16 500gb.

Truth is, there is nothing wrong with my current HD, I just want to change it out with the new one. Of course I'm running Vista 64-bit, and everything that's on my HD is either a free download stuff (OpenOffice, Firefox, Driver Sweeper, Xfire, etc), or games that I have the disc for. So it's not like I'm losing a bunch of data or pictures. I just want the new hard drive, I'm considering loading Win7 on it as my OS. Or maybe I should have Vista as my primary OS since 7 is a RC.

Or should I get another 640gb, and put them in Raid, and then use the 500 gb as backup?

What do you think?

[The Wise Monkey]

I've been using 7 as my primary OS since the RC was released, and it really is very good. You could always dual boot - install your new HD alongside the old one, install 7 on it to try it out. That way you are not committing to anything and you don't lose any of your old data.

[RickyTick]

I've been using 7 as my primary OS since the RC was released, and it really is very good. You could always dual boot - install your new HD alongside the old one, install 7 on it to try it out. That way you are not committing to anything and you don't lose any of your old data.

OK, so should I remove the old HD, and install the new one. Then put my Vista disc in to load the OS and format the HD, and make partitions. Then load Win7 on a partition for a dual boot.

I think I'm looking for a step by step process to make this happen.
What would you do with this scenario?

[The Wise Monkey]

No, I mean keep the old hard drive in your PC as your Vista setup, then put the new one in as well and install Windows 7 on that. :)

[RickyTick]

No, I mean keep the old hard drive in your PC as your Vista setup, then put the new one in as well and install Windows 7 on that. :)

ok, so my existing hd would remain C:\ and D:\, and the new drive would be maybe G:\. Does that sound right?

[The Wise Monkey]

Yeah, that should be OK. The new drive would appear as G:\ in Vista, but would call itself C:\ in Windows 7 in order to keep the same naming conventions.

[RickyTick]

When I install the second HD, will it need to be formatted, or will Vista do that from the other drive, or will it be formatted when I download Win 7 onto it?

[The Wise Monkey]

You should format it during the Windows 7 installation process - just make sure you get the right drive! :D

[RickyTick]

You should format it during the Windows 7 installation process - just make sure you get the right drive! :D

ooh, that could be ugly. :D
thanks

[Dr Cuervo]

I recently had a problem with an OEM WD HD not being able to be seen by Windows 7 for formatting purposes. If you get to the HD selection screen on Windows 7 installer and you don't see you new HD you may have to format it manually. To do so I used a program called GParted and everything worked fine.

[RickyTick]

Thanks Doc, I'll keep that in mind.
I think I'll attempt this in the morning.

[RickyTick]

OK, so I installed the new hard drive right underneath the old one. Hooked up the SATA connectors, and put everything back together. I hit the power button, and it booted up like always. Am I supposed to do something to make VISTA see it. As far as I can tell, it's not there.

[The Wise Monkey]

Does it appear in the BIOS? You probably need to format it before Vista can read it. Go to Start->Run..., and type in diskmgmt.msc. You should see the hard drive there marked as raw space, or something like that. You can then format it to NTFS.

[RickyTick]

It's recognized in the bios, and in Disk Management, but it won't format because it's not initialized. ??:confused:

[RickyTick]

Figured out how to initialize it, and now it's formatted.

I could probably google search "Dual Boot" and get plenty of info, but if I ask it here, maybe it could help someone else too.

On a dual boot, can you switch back and forth between operating systems, or do you have to make changes in the bios and re-boot?

[The Wise Monkey]

You won't need to make any changes in the BIOS. The booting is controlled by the boot loader and is stored on the first hard drive and it basically gives the location of the OS you want to load. When you start up the computer after installing the extra OS, then you should be presented with a choice of OSs. When you select one of them, the boot parameters for that OS are passed to the boot loader, and the OS can then be loaded successfully.

When you install the extra OS, it should edit the boot loader automatically so that you will be able to choose which OS to load whenever you power on.

[leon2046]

that should be OK. new drive would appear as G:\ in Vista, but would call itself C:\ in Windows 7 in order to keep the same naming conventions.

[RickyTick]

Yeah, that should be OK. The new drive would appear as G:\ in Vista, but would call itself C:\ in Windows 7 in order to keep the same naming conventions.


that should be OK. new drive would appear as G:\ in Vista, but would call itself C:\ in Windows 7 in order to keep the same naming conventions.

That sounds familiar.