Windows 10: Potential installation or upgrade problem

Currently running Windows 8.1 on a 20gb partition. I would like to upgrade to windows 10 when it is released.

Question is how?

I suspect 20gb isn't enough as 16gb is already taken up by win 8.1. I installed win 8.1 as a clean install then activated with a win 8 key.

Is there a way to install 10 and still be able to activate as I suspect an upgrade will fail and roll back?

Tim

:)

 

Screen tiles cannot be resized

The 7.8 upgrade has been withdrawn, so is no longer available through zune.



It should also not now be installed by a "Care Centre". One of the potential problems is excessive data use, I would wait to see if there is a fix.

 

isoburn in Win10 pro x64 not recognizing DVD disc capacity

Problem Resolved and question withdrawn. Appears to be a firmware upgrade required issue potentially driven by Windows Updates.

 

can you increase the size of your partition ??

 

I should have said that is the hard drive size although I have another 20gb disk with a backup of the c drive, it would mean new hard disks then setting up win 8.1 again.

 

If you have a second hard disk, you could span them to create a larger sized drive. Then, perform the upgrade, run the disk cleanup tool and delete the Windows.old and any extra cleanup, then shrink the partition back down to 20GB and un-span the second drive.

 

Spanning looks the way to go.

Can you span disks in windows disk management?

 

Yes and no.. you can span disks in Disk Management, but it doesn't offer much flexibility, and I don't think you can expand your system drive while its in use.

You would need to use a third party disk partitioning tool. What's more, "unspanning" the drive may not be possible without deleting both partitions, so you would need to backup the system partition, delete it, then restore it from backup.

 

Can you recommend a tool.

 

I have to ask, why so small a hard drive? Why not get a larger one?

 

I tried to span using disk management but there doesn't seem to be a way and mini partition wizard 9 free won't do it either. Any other ideas?

 

You can only span dynamic drives, so first you have to convert it to dynamic.

 

I also wanted to ask this.

Wouldn't it be easier banger to get a larger drive, if your budget allows?

1) Make an image of your current system. This would require that the new larger drive is in a USB dock or enclosure so that you can write the image to it.

System Image - Create in Windows 8
2) Remove 20 GB drive, install new larger drive

3) Restore System Image from step 1 to new drive (which is already on the drive)

There are a few more details, but this is something to think about.

 

But can you span an existing volume from what I have read they need to be empty?

At the moment budget does'nt allow as I would like a Helium filled HGST drives to replace the two 20Gb drives.

 

So I have tried Aomei Partition Assistant, Easus Partition Master and they only seem able to merge or expand a volume on the current hard disk not across two disks. I have read some Linux distros can do it but I;m starting to get a little out of my depth here.