Hi all,

I've had our old PC gutted and updated by the guys at fortune IT mall. They left a fake copy of windows vista on it at my request. Now I need to use the PC for some more serious work and have decided to update to windows 10.

While I am doing my best to backup everything, I note that there is a C and D drive on the PC.

I know from vista to windows 10 more or less wipes the drive clean but I'm wondering if the re-install of windows is done on C: does that necessarily mean that D: drive will be wiped as well?

In my cases, all files remained

Nothing seems to have deleted itself

The upgrade was completely painless from "Thai version" win 7 ultimate

Vista isn't supported as an upgrade to Windows 10. Only with Windows 7 and up can you do an in place upgrade.

So if going directly from Vista to Win 10 your only option will be to clean install. In that case you will be presented with options for the partition you want to install on early on in the install process.

You should be aware though that since Vista doesn't qualify for the free upgrade, your Win10 installation won't be activated.

Vista isn't supported as an upgrade to Windows 10. Only with Windows 7 and up can you do an in place upgrade.

So if going directly from Vista to Win 10 your only option will be to clean install. In that case you will be presented with options for the partition you want to install on early on in the install process.

Win10.png

You should be aware though that since Vista doesn't qualify for the free upgrade, your Win10 installation won't be activated.

Thanks

Realise that I'm going to have to pay for this one which isn't too much of an issue.

When you say I am going to be given the option of a partition, is that where rinfence D: drive?

Any explanation in laymans terms appreciated!

Yes. There will be several partitions shown. One of them will be your current C: drive and one will be D: although it won't say that. It should say "Vista" next to one of them and that will be C: drive. Only the drive that you select for install will be formatted.

If it was me I would make sure all the data was backed up and then delete all the partitions and start fresh. Partitioning a disk into C & D drives is a bit old school and is more hassle with few benefits for most users. In my opinion anyway.

Yes. There will be several partitions shown. One of them will be your current C: drive and one will be D: although it won't say that. It should say "Vista" next to one of them and that will be C: drive. Only the drive that you select for install will be formatted.

If it was me I would make sure all the data was backed up and then delete all the partitions and start fresh. Partitioning a disk into C & D drives is a bit old school and is more hassle with few benefits for most users. In my opinion anyway.

Many thanks again. To be honest I'd probably make a hash of it anyway so I'll go the full backup first. Appriciated your advice.

Yes. There will be several partitions shown. One of them will be your current C: drive and one will be D: although it won't say that. It should say "Vista" next to one of them and that will be C: drive. Only the drive that you select for install will be formatted.

If it was me I would make sure all the data was backed up and then delete all the partitions and start fresh. Partitioning a disk into C & D drives is a bit old school and is more hassle with few benefits for most users. In my opinion anyway.

The advantage of a disk partition for me is that the OS is on one partition and the data on another. I try to back them both up separately on a regular basis

so that if one goes down I don't lose the lot and have to rebuild everything from scratch.

I will be upgrading from Win 7 to Win 10 on Tuesday morning on my desktop. Monday I will be backing up the entire hard drive to an external HDD tomorrow and also adding a separate backup to that of my D or data drive.

I can't do it today as the kids are off school and I don't want them hanging about playing on the other 2 laptops and perhaps learning some "new words" from Daddy if he gets a problem.

Yes. There will be several partitions shown. One of them will be your current C: drive and one will be D: although it won't say that. It should say "Vista" next to one of them and that will be C: drive. Only the drive that you select for install will be formatted.

If it was me I would make sure all the data was backed up and then delete all the partitions and start fresh. Partitioning a disk into C & D drives is a bit old school and is more hassle with few benefits for most users. In my opinion anyway.

Have to completely disagree with you there. As an old computer guy, we used to have a saying. One drive for the OS, another for software/programs and another for data. You simply did not mix them back then. I still, to this day, do not mix them.

I install the OS onto C and D (I move the USERS directory after OS installation, plus some other OS folders as they will eventually contain user data). Programs get installed to drive E and my data goes onto drive F. Downloads go to yet another drive.

When I image my system, which I do regularily, I image drive C, D and E. Data on other drives just needs to be copied to an external HD or USB stick, if I need to do a complete wipe and/or repartition of the HD.

Personally, I am extremely uncomfortable with the way microsoft handles all this, although I do realize that it is only way the unwashed masses could use personal computers.

Yes. There will be several partitions shown. One of them will be your current C: drive and one will be D: although it won't say that. It should say "Vista" next to one of them and that will be C: drive. Only the drive that you select for install will be formatted.

If it was me I would make sure all the data was backed up and then delete all the partitions and start fresh. Partitioning a disk into C & D drives is a bit old school and is more hassle with few benefits for most users. In my opinion anyway.

Have to completely disagree with you there. As an old computer guy, we used to have a saying. One drive for the OS, another for software/programs and another for data. You simply did not mix them back then. I still, to this day, do not mix them.

I install the OS onto C and D (I move the USERS directory after OS installation, plus some other OS folders as they will eventually contain user data). Programs get installed to drive E and my data goes onto drive F. Downloads go to yet another drive.

When I image my system, which I do regularily, I image drive C, D and E. Data on other drives just needs to be copied to an external HD or USB stick, if I need to do a complete wipe and/or repartition of the HD.

Personally, I am extremely uncomfortable with the way microsoft handles all this, although I do realize that it is only way the unwashed masses could use personal computers.

Horses for courses, I guess.

I move all data directories (incl desktop) to Onedrive. Then turn on File History and Bitlocker.

That way a notebook can be lost, stolen, suffer drive failure or smashed in a fit of rage and all data is safe but can be restored quickly on another machine from anywhere. Well that's the theory anyway.

Yea, for some reason I never really liked having a C and D drive or more partitions....just a C partition. Of course there may also be some hidden system/restore related partitions created by Windows/loaded at the factory.

Now I do keep my data separate from the OS and programs by simply creating a "mydata" folder on the C partition and all the data that I create gets saved in the "mydata" folder....of course there are a lot of subfolders under the mydata folder so I have some filing order/system. I figure when a hard drive fails the whole drive fails (that's been my personal experience) and whether you have one partition or many partitions they are all gone. Whenever I do a image backup I backup everything. In a round about way I guess mydata folder is my D drive that I'm sure is the most common method of filing away your data especially since most new computers come setup that way. This is just me, right or wrong.

Yes. There will be several partitions shown. One of them will be your current C: drive and one will be D: although it won't say that. It should say "Vista" next to one of them and that will be C: drive. Only the drive that you select for install will be formatted.

If it was me I would make sure all the data was backed up and then delete all the partitions and start fresh. Partitioning a disk into C & D drives is a bit old school and is more hassle with few benefits for most users. In my opinion anyway.

The downside of partitioning a drive into C: and D: is that if the drive goes, you lose both anyway.

The upside is that if you want to do a clean install, which wipes the drive, having a separate C: (Operating System/Applications) and D: (Data) drive means you don't have to restore the contents of your D: drive, since you only need to wipe the C: Drive. This can obviously be a real timesaver if you have a lot.

Drives are more reliable now than 5-6 years ago but I still always use a separate physical drive for my data. One reason is that all of my system drives are 256 GB SSDs and they can fill up, especially if you mirror your One Drive and Google Drive data. Regular 1 TB drives are very cheap these days and 1 TB holds a lot of data.

What Motherboard exactly is fitted? You should check for compatibility before shelling out.