[Camaroon]

Hi everyone! Looking for some quick guidance about upgrading to W8 from W7. I have a desktop running W7 right now that I would like to make some hardware changes to before I upgrade to W8. The main thing I'd like to do is upgrade the hard drive I have the OS installed on. Right now I have W7 installed on an 80GB drive which I've come to realize isn't nearly large enough to have the OS installed on. I keep most of my files on 2 other drives in a NAS, and a lot of documents and things stored on Skydrive, but this 80GB drive is down to about 15GB of free space. I've built the system myself so I have an OEM W7 64 install disc.

What I'd like to do is buy a 120GB SSD to use as my C: drive, then take the 80GB drive and move the 2 other drives I have in the NAS into the desktop and take advantage of W8's ability to pool all the space together. My question is, if I buy & download the upgrade version of W8 do I have to install it on a drive that already has W7 installed on it, or do I just need the serial key from W7 to prove that I currently own a copy? If I can, I'd like to avoid having to install W7 on the brand new SSD just to be able to install W8. Plus I like to do clean installs if I can. I hope this all makes sense, thanks for any help!

[inteller]

you just need to show 8 a disc or copy of where 7 resides when you do the upgrade.

[Camaroon]

So basically I can do a clean install on the SSD, and when prompted, insert the W7 disc and I should be fine? Will I need to burn W8 to a disc?

[inteller]

yes and yes

[thzman]

Maybe it's different but I upgraded my kids computers to W8 through online download. At one point of the upgrade process I got the question if I wanted to burn the files to a DVD or make an install USB-drive. I made the DVD and on the following install I deleted all previous partitions and made a clean install without any problems. So I think that you should be able to make an install disc and make a fresh install on a new HDD/SSD.

Sent from my phone by airwaves.

[Camaroon]

Thanks to both of you! I've heard the upgrade process with W8 is fairly easy so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this goes smoothly. Did either of you have any issues with drivers? Did you have to go to hardware manufacturers sites to get W8 drivers before you did it, or did the OS find them for you?