Best way to upgrade to Windows 7

[LD55ZRA]

No problem; I'll put you back in.

No problem pervert. You are welcome.

 

[Unknown]

You don't think the OS needs backing up??? When your internal drive goes bad
you'll
wish you backed up everything.

 

[SC Tom]

If I had a backup of my OS and the internal drive goes bad what use would
the backup be to me.

There is nothing on C: that needs to be backed up.
I would need to replace the internal drive and reinstall the operating
system.

All my valuable data is on D: & E: drive and is carefully backed up.

It'd be handy in future before you reply to a post, you first read it.

That's why I use a good imaging program. When the HDD in my notebook
crashed, I was back up and running in less than an hour with everything the
same as it was at the last image, no reinstallation of anything. By imaging
to an external drive, I also eliminate the possibility of destruction of the
backup on an internal drive by malware, lightning strike, etc.
You may have your programs installed on your D: drive, but if you C: drive
crashes, odds are when you reinstall your OS, you'll have to reinstall some
of those programs also since almost every Windows program writes files and
registry entries to the OS. If you have to format a new drive and reinstall
the OS, all of that is lost and the programs won't run. Much easier to image
it and not have to go through all that, IMHO

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

If I had a backup of my OS and the internal drive goes bad what use would
the backup be to me.

There is nothing on C: that needs to be backed up.
I would need to replace the internal drive and reinstall the operating
system.

And reinstall and reconfigure all your programs. And reconfigure
Windows the way you like it.

Depending on how many programs you have installed, which programs they
are, and to what extent you have them and Windows itself personally
configured, that could be a minor job or a major job. If you believe
it would be a minor job for you, fine--don't back up C:. But doing
that would be a major job for many people and take a significant
amount of their time.

Besides all those things being time-consuming and troublesome, you may
have trouble with some of them: can you find all your application CDs?
Can you find all the needed installation codes? Do you even remember
all the customizations and tweaks you may have installed to make
everything work the way you like?

 

[Unknown]

If my internal drive goes bad, I simply install a new drive and then copy my
external to the internal. Roughly
30 minutes time.

 

[Bill in Co.]

That is true I generally need to reinstall many of the programs on D:


Can you suggest a program I could use to do the imaging?

Acronis True Image. If you buy it in the box it comes with a bootable CD,
too, in case you ever needed that.

 

[SC Tom]

Thanks Bill, I looked around and "Acronis True Image" seems to be popular
so I downloaded and installed it.

Bill beat me to it, but that's what I use and would have recommended also.
If you haven't already bought it, you can get a free version if you own a
Seagate, Maxtor, or Western Digital HDD. Here are the links to those:

WD version of ATI:
http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119&wdc_lang=en

Seagate/Maxtor Disc Wizard by ATI:
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j...toid=d9fd4a3cdde5c010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

They are not the full-blown versions with scheduling and all that, but work
just fine in a home environment, IMHO. You don't to have any of the drives
installed internally. If you're using an external USB/Firewire/eSATA drive
manufactured by them, it qualifies. I image my drives to an external WD and
have no problems with the software.

 

[milt]

Hi,

Is there a way to upgrade to Windows 7 w/o losing programs and data?

Thanks,

Oreally

Not really, you could just do the upgrade path but that is sure to lead
to problems and odd behavior. Your best bet is to back up your data
(pictures, docs, music, etc.) then format the drive and do a clean
install, that is your best chance of having a trouble-free install.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Not really, you could just do the upgrade path but that is sure to lead
to problems and odd behavior.

Sorry, but assuming that OREALLY is running Windows XP, that's not
correct. There is no upgrade path from Windows XP to Windows 7.

 

[PA Bear [MS MVP]]

[Better late than never, I suppose...]

 

[PA Bear [MS MVP]]

A member of the Windows Client team posting via supernews.com? I don't
think so...

 

[Greg Russell]

In

We realized at the start of this project that the "upgrade" from XP
would not be an experience we think would yield the best results.

April Fool's Day isn't until April 1st, today.