Windows 7 Or Windows 8 for laptop

[Mustang]

Hi topgundcp.

Thank you very much for going to so much trouble to answer my question. I have Acronis and been using it for several years now. Great program. And yes, familiar with Disk Management. In fact when he first bought the laptop I used disk management to shrink the C drive and create a primary storage partition in the free space, without touching the unlabelled partition containg the recovery program.

That's a very good point you made about Win8 not detecting the hidden partition because it has no drive letter, and hence no danger of corrupting it. Of course!

After my son had finished customizing Win7, I then created an Acronis image of the C drive, and saved it to the storage partition, as well as a copy to an external HD. This image is still there but a bit dated, and hence the need to do a fresh clean install.

So before installing W8, I'll do an Acronis image of the whole hard drive to an external USB3 or eSATA drive. That way if things go pear shape I can reinstall eveything exactly as is now. And if necessary, mount the Acronis image to extract data from documents, photos, etc.

After doing the Acronis image I'm a bit tempted to delete all partitions and format the whole HD and start from scratch. If needed I can then restore one or all of the current partitons from the image. Hmmmm? Maybe?

So thanks again topgun for your excellent detailed step by step guide.
Very much appreciated and puts my mind at peace.

 

[topgundcp]

@Mustang
You're Welcome.
Yes that's what I did for all the Laptops after backup the whole disk, removed everything including the hidden partition,
make use of the extra 10~15GB.
As indicated above, you don't need to reformat anything, at custom install, just delete all partitions, click NEW then let Windows Installation doing it automatically

 

[Mustang]

@topgun,

I'm probably a bit paranoic, but when I'm doing a clean install on a used HD, I normally delete all partitions, create a single one for the whole HD, then unconditionally format it using the command option under "Repair" on booting from installation disk. Command line: Format C: /u /FS:NTFS.

The partition deletion removes any boot material, and the unconditonal format remvoes any left over traces on the HD.

Probably a bit excessive, and takes a bit longer than normal format. Your thoughts?

 

[topgundcp]

If you open a command prompt and type: format /?
you will not see the /u option, however, the option does exist and basically writing Zero's on every single byte on the disk, that's why it takes longer.

With Windows Installation, after clicking New, you could do a regular Format in which all the bad sectors are marked or click Next to proceed then it does a quick format. I always do a quick format just to speed up the installation.

And what you do there is perfectly OK, it just takes longer for formatting to complete.

 

[Mustang]

Thanks topgun.

 

[Kat]

Hey, Mustang, only saw your PM a little while ago, and was about to reply
when I noticed this here.

That's pretty-well what I'd have recommended anyway.

Glad you got it sorted, and apologies for my tardiness in replying.

 

[Mustang]

Hi Kat,

Not a problem mate. And thanks for your courtesy in replying. Talked to my son this mornig and he's a go on buying Pro OEM from PLE computers. So all good. :thumb:

Go well. Regards Mustang

 

[Kat]

Cheers, mate!