Windows 10: How do I install W10 to a SATA drive

When I download my free version of Windows 10, I want to install it to my 128gb SATA drive which is now labeled Drive S, and keep my current installation of Win 7 Ultimate on drive C in case I want to revert back to Win 7.

How do I install Win 10 on my SATA drive, change it to become the bootable drive, and retain Win 7 on drive C? Also, if I decide to revert back to Win 7, what process do I go through to revert back to the old Drive C?

Thanks for your help.
*Confused

:)

 

Hard drive not recognised.

Installed a internal HDD from another PC . (SATA)

Drive is shown in BIOS setup

Win 10 does not recocognise and assign a drive id eg D:\

External drive connected by USB is recognised and works fine.

Is this a W10 glitz and if so how do I rectify it.

 

How do I install windows in laptop sata hard drive using other laptop.

You will need to find a working computer, download and create a bootable copy. See for instructions:

Step 1:
How to download official Windows 10 ISO files

Step 2:
How to: Perform a clean install of Windows 10

Shutdown the computer, put it in the other computer, boot then activate.

 

Hi.. welcome to the fourms..

The procedure is going to be that you have to perform the upgrade over a qualifying OS(Win7 SP1/Win8.1) and then at some point MS will supply an ISO to perform a clean install(Not sure on how that will happen yet).

And making a backup copy of your current OS set up will be the best way to make sure you can roll back. IMO.

HTH
Jeff

 

Your

is only "free" if you use it to upgrade Win 7 to Win10 -- and when you do that, you can't legally continue to use Win7 -- since they would then both share the same license.

If you want to install Win10 separately from Win7 and NOT do the upgrade, you will have to purchase a license for Win10.

 

Exactly. One Windows license, one Windows OS.

 

I am not planning to use my Registered and Activated copy of Win 7 at the same time as Win 10 (they will be on the same box). I only want to be able to "roll back" to Win 7 if I don't like Win 10 without having to reformat and reinstall everything.

Regards,
Ed

 

I understand that. I received the invitation from MS to upgrade to Win 10 for free. I am waiting on the instructions to download the upgrade. However, if I do not like Win 10, I want to be able to "roll back" to Win 7 without having to reformat and reinstall all of my software including Win 7!

Regards,
Ed

 

Then, I suggest imaging the Win7 installation and restoring from the image if you wish. It's good to have an imaging/backup capability, and external drives to do so are inexpensive.

I use Acronis True Image. I can restore 8.1 from a 64GB USB3 flash drive in less than 10 minutes. (I don't recall the size of the image, but it's not a minimal installation.) I'd really rather not clean install 8.1 again: there's more than a gigabyte of updates needed to bring it up-to-date (which may include updates for Office 2010).

My mode of doing Insider upgrades has been: do the upgrade online. Prepare an .iso from the .esd. Restore 8.1 to the boot drive. Mount the .iso and upgrade 8.1 to the latest Win 10 build. (Once I have the .iso, the rest of the process takes about a half hour.)

 

Theoretically, if you upgrade to Win10 from Win7, it saves the Win7 stuff such that you can "restore" it.

But, a "safer" way to do this is to image off Win7 using something like Macrium Reflect, then do the Win10 update. Any time after that, you can restore Win7 to its saved state from the MR backup.

 

You'll have 30 days to roll back to W7 (theoretically without loss of license, programs and files) if not satisfied and didn't delete windows.old folder.

 

Thanks, you guys, for all of your help and suggestions. I have Acronis True Image, but have been unsuccessful in the past in doing a good restore. I will try again. I will also take a look at Macrium Reflect as well.

Regards,

 

One problem with Acronis True Image that I didn't mention: their rescue disk (TI 2015) is Linux based, and it didn't like my X99 motherboard. (Maybe that has been fixed in the more current TI releases.) I had to prepare a rescue disk based on Windows PE (Pre-install Environment). That required a large download and install of some developer software. (Been long enough that my memory is hazy.) That works well. (I actually use a USB flash drive rather than an optical disk.)

 

Macrium Reflect than, it's PE but may have to download some PE components during install, it will do it for you.