Upgrade version on a new HDD

ok i know all about what qualifies for an upgrade and all that stuff but i intend to upgrade my hdd on my laptop and want to keep the vista/recovery part of my hard disk so i can send back to acer if my laptop needs repair under warrenty... i will be using the remaining space of my hard drive as an external Hard drive aswell

so i want to install windows 7 fresh on the new hdd but i do already have vista on the other drive... so how do i do this?

the way i see it, is i take out the old hdd put it in an enclosure and plug it back in via USB (with the new hdd installed). boot vista and run the upgrade from there (this will tell win7 that im running vista) but when i select custom/clean install will it give me an option as to which drive it goes on? i know it does this for a full version but will it give me this option for upgrade version doing a clean install...?

any help would be greatly appreciated

cheers
mtarm1

 

Install Vista (or copy image) in the new HDD first before upgrading.

 

Maybe nobody knows? Upgrade discs aren't out yet, and I've not seen any definitive guide on upgrades showing all the permutations possible. Your question is only answerable with guesses at this point.

Does it really matter though? In the worst case, you either clone your existing drive to the new drive or lay down a vista install on the new drive using your recovery discs and go from there.

 

yer true but that would take a lot longer...

 

it'd take longer true, but better than nothing. Seriously though, so it takes an extra hour, how often is someone going to be installing the upgrade on bare metal? Once? Twice?

Point remains though that we won't know for sure what works or doesn't work until the discs hit the streets. And then someone will likely find a clever workaround anyway.

 

true... still if anyone else has any ideas... feel free to post them.

btw does my origional idea sound about tight?

i will be upgrading my desktop first so that will take 3+ days to get right then ill move onto the laptop... and i still have to get the hdd too...

 

another kinda unrelated question...

for this hard drive should i go for a 320gb for $69 or 500gb for $103?

i currently have 100gb used on my current hdd but this will increase as i havnt bothered installing all my apps since it went in for repair (and was reformatted) because of the impending release of win7...

do you think the $34 extra is worth it to future proof myself? i do intend to have this laptop for a few more years but im not sure weather i will need the xtra or not.... i guess ill have my current hdd as an external disk but this will probs be used for backups...

 

I say go for the bigger one. You never know what you're going to need tomorrow.

 

yer thats my initial thoughts...

but this will be my total data available

Desktop 640gb
possible server/2nd desktop/media pc 300gb
External HDD (old laptop hard drive) 320gb
New Laptop HDD 320gb or 500gb
USB stick 8gb + 2gb + 1gb + 1gb
Sony MS Duo 4gb + 1gb + 1gb + 1gb + 2gb

so i curently have 1281gb of storage which will increase to either 1601gb or 1781gb...

lol thats a lot now that i think about it and i doubt i currently have any more than 640-700gb used...

am i making too big a deal about $34? probs...

end rant! lol

 

The 500GB drive will be slightly faster, you can find online tests. I don't know if it is noticable in the real world though. Has to do with the density of the data on the disks (both HD are 2 platter drives).

I had to make a similar decision, mine was between the 320GB 7200rpm drive and the 500GB 5400rpm. I kept hearing about the vibration on the 7200rpm drive so went with WD 500GB (mine is totally slient and no vibration) and no regrets.

 

I am in complete agreement with Lew on this.

The "How to", "Best Way", "Clean Install" Windows 7 with the 'upgrade disk' question comes up on all the forums daily. Lots of guesses but no one can definitively answer the question. After Oct 22, no more guessing

 

anyone have any similar experience with vista?