xp to windows 7

[paulreed]

Hello, I can't seem to find an answer anywhere else so...
I am ready to go from xp to windows 7 and will buy a new wd caviar black hd for it and also a new power supply, my question is, can i buy the windows 7 home premium UPGRADE (cheaper) and install it on the new hard drive while leaving my working xp drive alone. I think I can but want to make sure I get the cheapest way to get windows 7 and not write over my xp drive. I built 2 removable hd bays into the pc so I plan to use one to install windows 7, test it for a while and then swap our the xp and windows 7 drives so the windows 7 will be in the machine and the xp can sit on the shelf until needed.

Is this the best (cheapest) way to get windows 7?

Thanks Scott

Intel Q9650, Asus P5Q Deluxe, 4 gigs Corsair Dominator 1066 RAM, 2x Asus 256MB fanless video cards, 3x W.D. 320 gig SATA drives, 2x 250 gig removable backup drives, I-Star 400-6Q case, Sony Lightscribe DVD, Noctua fans, I-Star 580 watt power supply, ADS Pyro Firewire, Scythe Ninja Heatsink, Kensington Expert Mouse

[EGS]

Sure, you could do it that way. Alternately (even cheaper) just take an Acronis Image of your XP drive. Wipe the drive and install/test/Acronis Image the Win 7 install. Others here will advise dual boot or drive swaps, also good ideas. Be sure to follow all the AVID recommendations re Win 7/Pro-Tools optimizations.

[paulreed]

Thanks EGS, I think I will go ahead and get a new hd though, my xp one is a few years old and will get a newer one with the 64mb cashe since thay are so cheap now. I do use true image though, saved my ### more than a few times

once I get all this happy it will be time for PT9

[albee1952]

I would absolutely get Acronis, but I would leave the old XP drive intact. Just remove it and slip it into the anti-static bag the new drive came in. Do a fresh install of Win7, run all the tweaks and save a drive image(using Acronis TrueImage Home 11) to any USB drive of sufficient size(I keep a 2TB USB drive just for images). After you install Pro Tools and test it and find it running well, I would save another image. Then install the rest of your software and 3rd party plugins(and save a 3rd image when all is installed and working). Taking the time to save these images will make for easy/fast recovery(unless you enjoy re-installing every stitch of software you own)

When you go 6 months without needing to revert to XP, then I would clone the Win7 system drive to the old XP drive, so then you would have the ability to recover from a crash or virus with a simple drive swap.