Installing Windows 7

hemophobic

I've had the Win 7 disk since it came out but I haven't bothered to install it yet. Is it essential to backup? because I have over 300GB of files and I don't have another hard drive..

Lil306

It's a cruel circle....

hemophobic wrote: »

Is it essential to backup?

The question you need to ask, can you afford to lose the data if something goes wrong. That should tell you whether you should back up or not.

Alternatively create a partition on your existing HDD with some software and install to that partition, but to be honest it will be messy as you can be installing different O/S and file systems (I believe Windows 7 has it's own not sure) and you still have to backup data anyway

hemophobic wrote: »

and I don't have another hard drive

Without sounding stupidly obvious, why don't you just buy one. It's the cheapest option and you can get a new HDD for £5-10 that's around 30GB in size from Fleabay

The best option is buy another HDD, it's simple. Just save up £10 and go buy one...

Example : http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Maxtor-Fireball-3-40Gb-IDE-Hard-Disk-7200rpm_W0QQitemZ110487444286QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Computing_HardDrives_RL?hash=item19b9909b3e

hemophobic

None of it is important - mostly music/games/photos/movies/software but I don't want to lose it and I can't afford another hard drive atm (saving for MOT) and especially one that big. I might just leave it for another few months..

hemophobic

I had an idea but not sure if it will work - I got 2 PC's down stairs can i take the HD out of them and use them while keeping their data on aswell. But these are old and IDE and i think i have SATA so maybe not.

RANDOM - where can i get cheap compressed air?

custardy

hemophobic wrote: »

None of it is important - mostly music/games/photos/movies/software but I don't want to lose it and I can't afford another hard drive atm (saving for MOT) and especially one that big. I might just leave it for another few months..

all but the photos are replaceable(at a cost)
so back up the photos to online hosting

Lil306

hemophobic wrote: »

I had an idea but not sure if it will work - I got 2 PC's down stairs can i take the HD out of them and use them while keeping their data on aswell. But these are old and IDE and i think i have SATA so maybe not.

RANDOM - where can i get cheap compressed air?

Save up and wait if you can't afford it. Computers will always be there and Windows 7 will still be on your CD so it can wait.

You can use the old HDDs providing your motherboard has an IDE channel which is most likely. You then install the drives inside of the chassis and set the jumpers to master / slave. Also make sure that you set the relevant boot order in the BIOS

Compressed air, depends how big. For cleaning PC's around £5 at Asda, for cars, Shell Garages with free air / water pumps

BTW, if you just want to test out Windows 7, download VMWare Player. It's free and you can install it on your VM Player and have a bit of a play around, all you do is sacrifice some HDD space which you can get back by deleting the VMWare hard disk when no longer needed

Eric_Pisch

you should back up everything you don't want to loose regardless, hard drives fail they are a mechanical device and they wear out.

if you have a spare hard drive you can get an external drive caddy very cheap, these come in PATA and SATA formats so you can use any drive

heres a PATA (IDE) drive caddy that you can fit into a spare bay for under a fiver

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143277

busenbust

Is it essential to backup?

Yes See here .

hemophobic

The PC downstairs is on my network and I noticed it's got 119GB free space so i'm going to delete all the stuff I don't need anymore and transfer as much as I can over. Luckily my games I can download again from steam and itunes,messenger etc I can get back easily. I have the Win 7 upgrade disk so is it possible to format my hard drive before Win 7 because then it won't have vista on?? I bought from Dell and I still have all the disks.

I can't wait to buy a new HDD I won't have any spare money for months (I'm 19 - no job lol) and I used VMWare at college and hate it. I've just began re designing my desktop then didn't see the point until I put 7 on.

Sublime_2

You can get a 15 day trial of carbonite backup live, and if you are running vista, you can use windows easy transfer.

Lil306

hemophobic wrote: »

I can't wait to buy a new HDD I won't have any spare money for months (I'm 19 - no job lol) and I used VMWare at college and hate it. I've just began re designing my desktop then didn't see the point until I put 7 on.

Join, the club, I'm 26 recently unemployed

VMWare rules, it's a perfect Sandbox environment for testing. If you have files you suspect are dodgy just run them in the VMBox , if it breaks it your PC is still intact and secured. I've got 3 VMs atm Windws7, Centos and Windows XP pro. Good for knowledge training I need more ram however, the Windows 7 soaks it up like a !!!!!