Installing an OS Without Wiping the HD

**Nosjack** · November 29, 2012, 12:45 PM

Greetings techies.

First, some background:
I built a new PC a couple years ago, new Mobo, CPU, RAM, PSU, and Hard drive. I kept the old GPU and HD. I installed Win 7 (upgraded from Vista) on the old HD, and installed all my games and such on the new (faster) drive. Now that I think of it I should have just installed the OS on the new HD and left the old one for a backup, but nothing I can do about now.

So, here's the problem. My PC has begun slowing down, just doing normal stuff. Looking through files, opening random programs takes much longer, which leads me to believe that my several year old HD that contains the OS is failing. Is there a way I can install the OS on the new drive without wiping all of my game files?

Even if the HD isn't failing, I'd still like to install the OS on the newer HD, just because it's newer and much faster.

**ElvenKind** · November 29, 2012, 01:53 PM

Maybe try cloning your current HD with OS with Macrium Reflect?

**Bolkonsky** · November 29, 2012, 08:34 PM

Make a new partition, and install Windows to that. Then copy over all your files from the old partition, format the old partition, and merge it with the new one.

**Nosjack** · December 05, 2012, 03:40 PM

Originally Posted by Bolkonsky

Make a new partition, and install Windows to that. Then copy over all your files from the old partition, format the old partition, and merge it with the new one.

Never mind, I just created a new partition, installed the OS and I'm going to format the old drive once I backup the files.

Thanks to both of you for your answers.

Is there any reason why my OS and game files can't be on separate partitions?

**ElvenKind** · December 05, 2012, 04:58 PM

http://www.everything-microsoft.com/...-in-windows-7/

**Nosjack** · December 18, 2012, 04:54 PM

Alright, everything is working. Except, I'm not able to format the old drive. I'm assuming this is because it has OS files on it. How would I go about formatting it?

**irishron** · December 18, 2012, 05:15 PM

Right-clck the drive's icon and click format. It will come with something about it being in use but you click the format button it should override. At least it did it for me.

**karamazovmm** · December 18, 2012, 05:49 PM

if it doesnt work, right click on computer click managment, go to the storage part, see the old, format it from there

**Nosjack** · December 18, 2012, 05:56 PM

In both menus, the "format" option is greyed out.

I have a question though, in the disk management my old HDD is labeled as "system, Active, Primary Partition", and the new partition that I installed the OS to is "Boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump, Primary Partition"

Could the fact that my old HDD is labeled "system" be screwing things up? I'm running off of the OS on the new HDD, so it's not that. (FYI, the format option is greyed out for both HDD)

**irishron** · December 18, 2012, 06:18 PM

Mine was greyed out and I clicked it anyway and it worked.
But before that I deleted everything from the windows folder it would let me first.

**karamazovmm** · December 18, 2012, 08:00 PM

one thing that you could do is to run the cleaning program that comes in windows, it erases the files from previous windows installations

otherwise you can do the old way

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l.../bb490893.aspx

cmd>right click on it run as admin

diskpart

list disk

select disk "put the number of the disk that you want to wipe"
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=NTFS
assign
exit

**Bolkonsky** · December 18, 2012, 09:19 PM

I really have to recommend EASEUS Partition Manager, it's free, and I use it for everything and it works great.

http://download.cnet.com/EaseUS-Part...-10863346.html

Much easier than using cmd for someone that doesn't know what exactly they're doing.

**Nosjack** · December 19, 2012, 10:13 AM

Originally Posted by Karamazovmm

one thing that you could do is to run the cleaning program that comes in windows, it erases the files from previous windows installations

otherwise you can do the old way

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l.../bb490893.aspx

cmd>right click on it run as admin

diskpart

list disk

select disk "put the number of the disk that you want to wipe"
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=NTFS
assign
exit

I'm not even sure how to open that program, and I've had very bad experiences with script-commands. Thanks, but I'd rather not risk it.

Originally Posted by Bolkonsky

I really have to recommend EASEUS Partition Manager, it's free, and I use it for everything and it works great.

http://download.cnet.com/EaseUS-Part...-10863346.html

Much easier than using cmd for someone that doesn't know what exactly they're doing.

That's actually what I used to shrink my partition on the old drive (so it wouldn't overwrite my game files) and such. Unfortunately, there's no "format" option for either drive, it's there for drives that don't have an OS installed however.

This is really bugging me, I'm half way to just unplugging the old drive and leaving it be, just so I don't have to think about it.

Any last minute suggestions?

**karamazovmm** · December 19, 2012, 11:15 AM

well, I cant think of any, aside have you used the windows program to remove unused files? I think its disk cleaner or something like that, it removes windows.old folders, however you dont have one, and thats the thing, you can try

if you follow the instructions step by step there wont be a problem, to use cmd, just type cmd in your start menu, right click on it and click run as admin