Windows 10

[Hinfrance]

I'll be doing THIS ahead of any changes. Better than putting in the original W7 disk and then going through hours of updates . .

[hssutton]

Jinky. Do you have a spare hard drive. If so you could download such as http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx which is free and make a cloned copy of your 'C' drive and then install W10.

Harry

[spinner]

I'll be doing THIS ahead of any changes. Better than putting in the original W7 disk and then going through hours of updates . .

It's a shame Windows doesn't have this capability built into it's systems. I've been doing this with my Mac for years using it's Disk Utility. It's basically drag and drop operation.

[StephenBatey]

Does your computer let you boot from an external disk (there will probably be a setting in the BIOS to specify the boot order). If so, you could play safe and disconnect your Win7 disk (just pull the power or SATA cable from the drive) to make sure nothing can happen to it, and install Win 10 on an external USB drive to see how it goes. Years ago, I used to run a dual boot system, but that required a Boot Manager to be installed, which basically was the operating system that first booted, and then let you decide which OS to run.

From memory, if the operating system will fit, you should be able to boot from a USB stick.

[WillyP]

As I understand it, the way you are describing it, you would purchase W10. Whereas, if you have W& you can upgrade it to W10 for free.

Of course, you could clone you W7 to another drive, then keep the cloned drive at W7, and you could swap out between W7 and W10... well, maybe, as windows registration might play a factor.

My drive is nearly full so I've bought two new ones to upgrade to anyway. The article Hinfrance linked to is a good one and good advice. I've used Macrium Reflect my self and it's a good suggestion to clone the drive and have that as a backup just in case something goes awry.

The important thing to note here is the difference between cloning a disk and backing it up.

If you clone your disk to another disk, you can simply plug the clone in and be exactly where you were when you made the clone.

With a backup, re-install the OS and cross your fingers the backup is valid, and included everything you needed backing up.

[jinky]

I`ve no idea if my computer would boot from an external hard drive or not. From H`s link I know not whether I have :
•An internal or external hard drive with enough capacity to hold the contents of the drive you wish to image.
My PC has a 1tb built in memory and 6gb of ram I think so I would have thought a 1 tb drive would suffice  but could get a 2tb one.

•A USB drive to turn into a restoration drive (minimum size 1GB). ? What does this mean in terms of size I have a number of usb ports that  plug my external drives into but no idea what size they are. Ah - if I have a 10 or 20 gb flash drive stick plugged in I am guessing this does the trick?
The rest to be honest is gobbled gook to me.
Given that my pc is now 4/5 years old I am thinking why not use windows 7 that I a happy with for a few more years, unsupported as it may be and then just change the whole machine when I need to. Am I being stupid?

Just seen that dvd maker isn`t included with windows 10 so I might well just stick with what is not broken

[Hinfrance]

Paul, it sounds to me like your default position - keep Windows 7 until you change your PC - is the most sensible one for you, given that you are not sufficiently up to speed on the various technical issues surrounding keeping a  W7 restoration strategy in place.

I have no idea how anyone manages with just 1tb of storage. I've got 5tb internal and another 4tb on USB drives and a 3tb NAS* drive. 

*Network Attached Storage

[jinky]

I have a couple of external drives too but probably need to do more back up and buy more storage so may well do that.

[Oldboy]

When most computers boot today they will look for the C drive before checking other options set up in your Bios like drive D which may be a partition on drive C or an extra internal drive attached to your motherboard. If it still can't find the operating system then it will check the USB drives. Years ago on boot up it would check floppy disk drive A first before looking for drive C. This meant if you left a floppy disk in drive A and restarted you computer it would look in drive A first, and if it couldn't find the operating system it would just sit there doing nothing. You had to remove the floppy disk from drive A and reboot the PC. It used to drive us mad! 

[Oldboy]

I have a couple of external drives too but probably need to do more back up and buy more storage so may well do that.

To find the size of any drive select file explorer from the start menu, highlight the drive and right click and select properties from the dropdown list.  This will show you: Used space, Free space and capacity. On mine it shows Bytes as 2,985,427,988.480 or 2.71 TB. This shows it's a 3tb drive. The missing space is't missing as 3gb is the theoretical size if all the space could be used which, it can't. Some might be on a hidden partition or open partition like mine drive D, which is a backup. Other space will be used by the Fat file and disk software but it sill doesn't add up to the theoretical size. 

[StephenBatey]

When most computers boot today they will look for the C drive before checking other options set up in your Bios like drive D which may be a partition on drive C or an extra internal drive attached to your motherboard.

I see - I was mislead by this and the previous computer having the option in the BIOS to boot from any drive I chose, internal or external. The selection was on the physical drive, not the drive letter. I've even used a computer where (until I changed the letters) the boot drive was D (and C existed).

[Oldboy]

When most computers boot today they will look for the C drive before checking other options set up in your Bios like drive D which may be a partition on drive C or an extra internal drive attached to your motherboard.

I see - I was mislead by this and the previous computer having the option in the BIOS to boot from any drive I chose, internal or external. The selection was on the physical drive, not the drive letter. I've even used a computer where (until I changed the letters) the boot drive was D (and C existed).

You can assign any drive with any letter you want and it will work fine but, if there is a problem with the operating software it may try to boot from drive C rather than Drive D. A message like, Operating System Not Found" or "Missing operating system" error message', will appear and it won't search for any other drive. 

[spinner]

When most computers boot today they will look for the C drive before checking other options set up in your Bios like drive D which may be a partition on drive C or an extra internal drive attached to your motherboard.

I see - I was mislead by this and the previous computer having the option in the BIOS to boot from any drive I chose, internal or external. The selection was on the physical drive, not the drive letter. I've even used a computer where (until I changed the letters) the boot drive was D (and C existed).

Don't want to contradict OB, but most modern motherboards give you an option on boot [POST], before even getting to the OS, to pick which drive you can boot from, usually F8 or F9, as well most modern motherboards will allow you, in the BIOS, to set the boot disk you wish to boot from. You can set the BIOS to check for USB first and it will look at your external drives and your sticks and if not finding any will go the next option. You could conceivably set your BIOS to check USB first, DVD 2nd and Floppy 3rd before it even tries for a hard drive. AND if you do select internal Harddrive, it will give you an option as to WHICH hard drive to check first.

I have a PC with Win7 Pro as the main OS, it was a Refurbed business machine. However, I also have a Hackintosh external drive and every once in a while play around with Linux Distros. I have the machine set to boot from the Win 7 drive but if I want the Hackintosh or Linux system, because both of them have some software that is way better than Microsoft versions, I just hit the F8 key on boot and pick which of those drives I want to use.

You could, conceivably clone your current Windows drive, and either upgrade it to Win 10 or upgrade your original drive to Win 10 keeping the clone as a back up. I do this regularly with my legitimate iMac. I have an external drive that is a clone, I upgrade it first to whatever system is current. Once I'm satisfied there are no major bugs I upgrade my original drive. I do this because there is no way on earth I'm every going to crack the iMac open. Too complicated

[hssutton]

Spinner. yes you are correct, but once you select the drive you want to boot from it then becomes your 'C' drive. As I'm running both W7 & W10 I just hit the delete button on my PC at post and then select the drive I want to boot from in bios. or in my case UEFI which has replaced the BIOS.


Harry

[Ken.]

Windows 10 continues to work well for me on my laptop... much better than the Windows 8/8.1 it came with. It has already updated to Build 10240, which no longer shows the build number in the lower right of the desktop and not in the computer properties as well.

My only real complaint continues to be about the update process, in that it updates whenever it damm well pleases. For those of us on metered connections this can be very disrupting by causing us to use up our data to quickly.