Upgrade OS before or after new build?

onipar

onipar

Member
I'm planning a new build soon, and to save money on both an HDD and an OS, I was hoping to use my current HDD.

The HDD is a 500 GB Western Digital, a few years old. It has roughly 350 GB free space.

It's running Windows XP. I have a Windows 7 upgrade disk, and I was wondering if I should upgrade to Windows 7 while it's still in my old computer, or if I should transplant the HDD into the new computer, and then upgrade?

Thanks!
 
Put the old hard drive in your new system,Then install windows. :)

Boot from the Windows 7 cd though as soon as you switch on your system then upgrade windows from there.
 
Nevakonaza said:
Put the old hard drive in your new system,Then install windows. :)

Boot from the Windows 7 cd though as soon as you switch on your system then upgrade windows from there.
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Great, sounds good! You know, now that I'm thinking of it, I vaguely remember trying to upgrade using this disk before. I booted from the disk, and I think it said that it couldn't upgrade from the disk because XP is too old a version or something like that, and that I had to do....something...but now I can't remember what (and I never did upgrade because I figured I'd wait till I built a new computer)...

This sound familiar to anyone?
 
You can't upgrade XP to 7. You have to do a fresh install. But you can do a fresh install from the upgrade disk.
 
johnb35 said:
You can't upgrade XP to 7. You have to do a fresh install. But you can do a fresh install from the upgrade disk.
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Ah, gotcha. Thanks!

On last question. I was also thinking of making this a dual boot with a linux OS. Can you point me in the direction of a good tutorial for that, or is it just a matter of partitioning the drive while installing the Win 7 OS?
 
I've asked someone to come and help you with that question. Voyagerfan99 should be here momentarily.
 
onipar said:
Ah, gotcha. Thanks!

On last question. I was also thinking of making this a dual boot with a linux OS. Can you point me in the direction of a good tutorial for that, or is it just a matter of partitioning the drive while installing the Win 7 OS?
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Most of the time it is as simple as partition, install windows, install linux and you are done. Just decide how much space you want for Linux and set that aside. boot up to a partition tool such as gparted, and partition 1 NTFS partition for windows (larger than 60GB should be good), 1 partition in EXT4 for Linux (I suggest between 20 and 40 GB unless you need more) and one swap partition at least the size of your RAM, but 1.5x the RAM is average.
It is a good Idea to set aside a DATA partition for things you need access to in both OSs.

Boot to windows and install to the NTFS partition. Make sure you install all your drivers and such and it is properly setup to your liking. Then use it to make your Linux install media. Then boot to your linux media and install from it to the EXT4 partition following the instructions in the setup manager for your Distro. Then update, and you have successfully dual booted your system. It is not a difficult thing to do.
 
wolfeking, I'm coming up on the build day, and have a couple clarification points I wanted to ask about.

First (and this is something I asked about in a separate thread, but would like your input), I purchased a 120GB SSD for the OS, and I'm using my 500GB for data. Would you say 120GB is big enough to go ahead with the dual boot? If so, how would you partition the 120GB SSD (how much space for each OS, etc)?

You said, "It is a good Idea to set aside a DATA partition for things you need access to in both OSs." Was this only assuming one HDD? In other words, since I'll have the 500 HDD for data, would you still suggest a data partitian on the SSD, or now I can just use the HDD for that?

Any other tips are welcome. Thanks! :)
 
Oh, and in addition to the last questions I posted, what format should aI create the "swap partition" in? And what is a swap partition anyway? :P
 
1. that was assuming one hard drive only, yes. Sorry, most of my linux installs have been on laptops, so I generally work on single HDD systems.

2. Set aside 20GB for linux, no less. That will give you room to work with.

3. Set everything that is not gven to linux to windows. Windows is a giant hog of HDD space comparitively.

4. Use Swap for swap. It is its own format proceedure. swap is necessary or the OS will not work right. It is basically the same thing that windows uses except it is set aside in a partition of its own.
 
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wolfeking said:
1. that was assuming one hard drive only, yes. Sorry, most of my linux installs have been on laptops, so I generally work on single HDD systems.

2. Set aside 20GB for linux, no less. That will give you room to work with.

3. Set everything that is not gven to linux to windows. Windows is a giant hog of HDD space comparitively.

4. Use Swap for swap. It is its own format proceedure. swap is necessary or the OS will not work right. It is basically the same thing that windows uses except it is set aside in a partition of its own.
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Wolfeking, Thanks so much for all the help. Not sure if you remember, but last year I was building a computer for my parents and you were a huge help then as well. Cheers! :good:
 
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