[SOLVED] new hard drive arriving today-need advice

The Samsung HD103SJ hard drive that I ordered is arriving today, and I need a little advice. Being that it has 1TB in space, I have plenty of space to work with, most likely more than I'll ever fill up.

When I clean reinstalled (the last time) the OEM partition (Win 7 Home Premium), I fully updated it, applied my Windows Anytime Upgrade key, making it 7 Pro. Then, after a final check for updates, I installed Macrium Reflect, and added no other programs at all (except MSE). Then I backed up the fresh install to my Seagate backup drive.

This is my way of doing an install, fully updating it, installing the AV of my choice, adding no extra programs, then do a full backup using Macrium. It's the most effective restore point that you can have, is a freshly backed up install (or reinstall). With that, you can undo anything.

OK, my main question is this, will my keys for my optional programs, in my case, Acronis True Image Home 2010 & Raxco's Perfect Disk 11 Professional, continue to work on the new install, after a clean install of the products? I have the install files for all of my programs, making reinstall much faster.

I don't plan to reinstall the recovery partition, being that I made recovery discs, and recently (last month), I ordered the reinstall discs from HP themselves. They are sealed, then was placed in a ziplock bag. I will revert to using them after the ones that I made wears out.

Also, I intend to install Vista SP2 (64 bit) on the first partition that I'll create, giving me three OS's to work with. Ultimate will be clean installed.

But before doing anything, I'll use Easeus Partition Master to format the drive, and create the partitions that I wish.

One other question, will the 100MB partition be needed, since I'm going to install Ultimate? My thinking is that should correct any potential boot issues that may arise. If not, I won't recover that, either. But if it will present a problem, let me know.

At last, my drive just arrived, and was packaged far better than the Caviar Black was. It has a plastic cover, and was wrapped in a cardboard sleeve to prevent damage, why can't they ship all drives in this manner? At least the cardboard sleeve will help a lot. Costs what, a quarter or less? If the option were available, I'd gladly pay for premium packaging, but the only options that you have is the method of shipping that you want.

Any and all advice will be greatly appreciated.

Cat

Yes the keys will work. When you say "install files" do you mean the executable files or ones you saved from the "Programs" folders? If you save from the Programs folders they won't work correctly, you need to do a new install of the two programs again.
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The Western Digital drive you bought was probably an OEM drive which is just the drive, no fancy packaging. The Samsung was more likely a Retail packaged drive for use on store shelves.
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The 100MB drive is not necessary since you'll have the partition already. Normally it's only created when you make the partitions through the Windows 7 install partition section during the install process.

The install files that I'm talking about are the ones that you download to install any program, usually a small file, except the case of Adobe, it's over 40MB. Normally, they go into your documents or download folder. I always save the latest versions on a thumb drive.

Thanks, and I hope that it clears up your question.

Cat

Nibs, these HDs from Newegg are OEM as well, it's just a cardboard insert surrounding the drive but it worked much better than the recycled cardboard end-caps used by another company I used to get my first HD103SJ.

Cat, the only reason I can think of that your products wouldn't reinstall on your new HD with your current key is if you got them from the give-away-of-the-day site because they build their installer around the manufacturers installer and have it phone home for authorization to install on only one day.

As for the 100mb partition, I assume you mean the recovery partition HP creates on their machines - that is used to reinstall the OS (their version with their crapware as well) if your system is trashed. You said you did back this up so since you already make an image and do external backups I do not believe you will miss it.

A 1TB drive is actually only about 900ish MB so if you divide it equally in 3 partitions they would be about 300MB each. I believe with Win7 your max is 4 partitions (under MBR formatted HDs). You of course do not have to make the partitions equal but I would not go more than half the drive for a single partition so that is uses 4kb clusters not 8. The bigger your clusters the more potential for wasted bytes on every file.

Okay... the executables then. My bad! LOL!

Cats product keys are valid, he didn't get them from that goofy site "Giveaway of The Day". I won't use any software from there because of all the limitations involved. Either the software "given away" should be usable on any new platform or install as long as the serial is tied to the user who downloaded it. Don't tie my hands to the original OS install or whatever.

I believe the 100MB partition Cat is referring to is the "System Reserved" partition installed by Windows 7 during the initial OS install. HP's recovery partition is a lot bigger than 100MB.

Thanks for all of the advice, the install went quite well, but was time consuming. What I did was first install Vista SP2, on a 150GB partition. I used the Free Partition Wizard to create (and format as NTFS) three primaries, the one that I mentioned above, a 250GB for 7 Pro (my OEM install), and a 200GB one for Ultimate.

Prior to removing my other drive, I used Macrium to create a fresh backup of my OEM install, w/o the 100MB partition. The recovery partition has been long gone. This way, I'd lose no bookmarks or anything.

I then took that backup, and installed it on the 250GB partition that I created for it, not restoring the MBR. After installing the backup, of course it wouldn't boot, so I used the emergency boot disc that you create within the Windows backup program, ran it, it found what needed repairing & fixed it. It now boots normally. Had I used the OS disc to do the repair with, the Windows symbols won't show at startup, instead, it will startup with that "Vista" look (that row of green bars).

All that I have left to do is install the programs on Ultimate, and back everything up. I've already used Perfect Disk to defrag Vista & 7 Pro.

Instead of an OEM backup partition, Acronis True Image has a way to recover the system by pressing F11 at startup. I need to learn how to accomplish this, but that will be the last thing I do.

But I believe I'll rest for a while before doing anything else, setting up a computer is not easy, but I did make it easier on myself by having the install files on a thumb drive. A lot easier.

Cat

Very interesting Cat.

Could you explain (when you're up to it) the boot options as presentend to you on start-up?

If I ever needed to look up "how many ways to skin a cat" in the dictionary, I think this post would come up. I mean that in a good way.

Enjoy!

yodap, it shows as Windows 7, Microsoft Windows Vista, Windows 7 Professional (recovered). I finally have everything done, except there's still work to do on Ultimate.

I was going to recover my fresh reinstall backup, but I didn't want to lose any of my bookmarks and settings. So I took the chance of just backing up my OEM partition. Had I known that it would have worked out so well, I would've done the same with Ultimate. The reason that I didn't, I had so much junk on it (it's an evaluation OS, as is Vista) that I didn't want to move it onto this drive. I lost nothing in doing so.

I'll tell you, I'm really pleased with this drive, it's quiet, like it should be. Hopefully, it'll last a long time.

Cat

Why does it say "(recovered)"?

It seems that I've seen that before on a system that had been repaired. Not sure though.