Joined: Jun 11, 2009
Posts: 894
Location: Dallas, Texas USA
Sorry if this is a repeat post as I go dropped before I could hit send. Darn WinMo!
If you perform an upgrade from XP to Win7 on partition C, it should leave partition M alone as M: is treated as a separate drive.
However with that being said, I would still backup partition M to an external drive; Win7 is still a Microsoft product after all.
Also, none of your apps will transfer to Win7 so you will need to reinstall them after the Win7 is up to date. Grab all your favorites, My Documents folder and any data file (not apps) you want to keep from the C: because the upgrade will wipe them too.
You will not need to reformat the drive or partition. Win7 may in its upgrade process format partition C for you if XP was running on a fat32 build as Win7 runs on NTFS.
I hope that answers your questions.
Just remember: Microsoft = Backup or lose it!
Joined: Mar 23, 2009
Posts: 455
Location: Osijek, Croatia
If his XP was running on FAT 32 then his M: partition is also a FAT 32 and that could be a problem once WIN 7 installs.
Joined: Jun 11, 2009
Posts: 894
Location: Dallas, Texas USA
Joined: Aug 23, 2009
Posts: 55
Location: Naperville, IL
Also back up your email and contacts, you will lose them ( I found this out the hard way). You will now use Windows Live for your email if you used outlook express.
Joined: Nov 07, 2009
Posts: 21
Location: Chesterfield, VA
Strand,
If this is a desktop and you have the space for another drive, I would recommend adding another drive and doing your clean install to that drive.
I'm not sure if this is one of the upgrades where it has to see the old system install or a copy of the install media. If not, and you roll with the added drive, you'll also want to make sure that is the only drive in the computer. The Vista/Win7 family has a very different boot manager than the old MBR/BOOT.INI system. Any drive in the computer will be come part of the boot manager's knowledge and it can make things messy when you try and move drives around. Such as trying to boot to the old drive for some reason (like seeing where on the drive some program is looking for a license file).
Anyway, I always fear losing some file from the old system so I usually do a clean install and then add the old system disk back into the computer once everything is happy. That way I can go back and look through the old directories and find the occasional file I missed transferring over. After a few months, I wipe the space and use it for something else (like added space for media or dedicated drive for backup space).
As much as I think MS is still missing some basic functionality when compared to other OSs, and as much as I despised Vista, I'm pretty happy with 7. My MB failed back around Halloween and I went from an AMD based HP to an Intel I7 series based Dell and when I booted the old drive in the new Dell, it took a few minutes to identify the devices and load drivers and was up and running in under 20 mins with only one device that it didn't have a driver for. I was really impressed.
Good luck with your upgrade!
Joined: Jul 23, 2009
Posts: 1045
Location: Shakopee, MN
Joined: Sep 29, 2009
Posts: 119
Spootcat has the best Idea...get another HD and put them both in and use the new one in sata slot 1 for Winders 7 clean install. Dual boot will occur if OS's are on the same drive but another partition. 80 bucks is a small price to pay for safe data...
I run XPpro and 7 on a 360 cut into 2 partitions. I also have my old drive in as F: and G: and there's no problems. I continue to mine data off of F: and G: lol
Deleted......
Joined: Feb 16, 2009
Posts: 1439
Location: Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Ok so I can dual boot if I install win 7 on a partition, i actually have 2 extra hard drives kicking around in case if I ever need em, so I could copy my M drive over to a new HD and install win 7 on my M partition, correct? and this will let me dual boot, right?
