Installing the same windows again on a PC, how to avoid clean install?

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IndependenceYou

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#1  Edited By IndependenceYou
Member since 2012 • 140 Posts

I have windows 7 ultimate on my PC right now, I want to install again a 'new copy of windows 7 ultimate.

Is there a way, to install a new windows 7 OS to a computer that has the same OS without wiping the hard drives?

If so, how?

If not, can I just disconnect my hard drives that I don't want wiped and reconnect them after Install? I have 4 drives total. The C: drive being the drive that I believe is my boot drive. The others being my separate file drives, for games, pictures, and movies etc.

Any input would help, I searched google, and I found information but not what I wanted.

Thank You For Your Time Fellas.

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#2 Byshop  Moderator
Member since 2002 • 20504 Posts

You don't need to wipe or disconnect any hard drives to do a clean install. Every version of Windows from (if I remember correctly) Vista onward will backup all existing OS files into a directory called Windows.old when you install a new OS on them. A clean OS install just means that you have just performed a base Windows install, not that the hard drive is empty. A clean OS install on a hard drive with 100GB of files and a clean OS install on a newly formatted hard drive will run exactly the same. After you install the new OS, you can then at your leisure remove the files you don't need from the backup directory to free up space. Windows switched to an "image based" deployment method a while back. The old install method was that the installer would sort of build the OS around what's in your PC as opposed to now where the OS is essentially "fixed" on the disk and the installer essentially copies it over and performs some post copy configuration. The benefit of the earlier method was that you could re-install Windows over top of an existing copy and retain most of the settings, but at the cost of a slower install and what in time proved to be a generally less reliable installation method that was unnecessarily complex. Image based deployments are faster and more consistent, but at the cost of removing the ability to install Windows over top of an existing copy so basically any Windows install these days is a "clean" install.

-Byshop

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#3 IndependenceYou
Member since 2012 • 140 Posts

@Byshop: Thank you sir, thank you very much.

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#4 Byshop  Moderator
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@IndependenceYou said:

@Byshop: Thank you sir, thank you very much.

No problem. Windows reinstalls got so much easier after they changed this because you didn't have to scour your drive for every file you might need before you wipe and reformat. Obviously the only limitation is you'll need to have enough space on your drive to accommodate the new install (around 25GB should do it) but besides that this is the best and easiest way to go

-Byshop