Questions on Upgrading Hard Drive

[bradjedis]

Greetings all,

So, I want to upgrade my primary Hard Drive. What is the best method? Cloning or Image? Do I need to pre-format? or with cloning, does that get handled?

Thanks,
Brad

[Claude]

Not knowing what hardware / operating system you've got Brad, I'd say pre-format even if it's just to keep control of what's happening.

[stuck]

When I replaced a HDD with a SSD in a Win 7 laptop I considered cloning or imaging but in the end decided to install everything from scratch. It gave me complete control over what was on the new drive so I was sure it was junk free. Restoring data was not needed as it was already on an external HDD.

I did watch a lot of paint drying while Win 7 installed all its updates but there after it was quick as the only applications I need to install were Firefox, Office and Sibelius. By the way, when it came to applying the Win 7 updates, I first set Windows Update to 'never check' and then started a manual search for updates and installed ONLY 'Important' updates, leaving all the 'Recommended' ones alone. The update options are still like that now, never check and install only Important ones. A manual update check is run each month just before the next crop are due out, i.e. it's about a month behind in patching. End result? The machine has never seen hide nor hair of anything Win 10 related.

Ken

[BobH]

^^^ What Ken said.

[Rudi]

...The update options are still like that now, never check and install only Important ones....

We get what you said, but just to correctly reiterate;

• ...never check and install only Important ones...      ~OR~
• ...never check and install only Important recommended ones...