X25-M: Installing Win7 over Vista

[idata]

My upgrade disk should arrive today or tomorrow - any "must do" tips to ensure an efficient install? BIOS is set to AHCI, and the X25M is plugged into SATA port 0; I'll make sure to pull the plug on all my other drives before the install if the upgrade disk allows it.

I don't have any important apps or things worth saving on the current X25M Vista install, so I assume I should just format the SSD and do a fresh install with the upgrade disk. Can I just boot to my second drive (also has Vista) and do a simple command prompt "format SSD:" or do I need to do something special?

[idata]

Thanks everyone -

Installed successfully last night, if anyone has to go through this, the Win7 upgrade disk apparently forces you to boot to the hard drive first (even if BIOS is set to DVD drive 1st) and load setup from the DVD within Vista; you tell it you want a clean install, and then it tells you to re-boot from the DVD if you want to format the existing partition. I guess it wants to check if Vista is legit before letting you boot from the DVD directly.

Anyhow, installing on the X25M took no more than 15 minutes, and W7 loading to desktop from "Windows Starting" took about 10 seconds. I haven't plugged in my secondary drive yet, I'm sure it will slow things down. HD Experience index for the X25M is a 7.7.

[idata]

Are you sure your DVD was set to before the hard drive in the boot order? I have the upgrade package and I definitely booted straight off my DVD when I installed, and just this past weekend I booted a friend's machine with a dead XP install from the upgrade DVD. I wanted to try to recover some files from the hard drive, which was still bootable up to the "Last boot failed" boot manager screen.

[idata]

I'm 100% certain, boot sequence was DVD->HD, tried it twice - the DVD spun for a while and both times it eventually booted Vista.

Only after I ran the DVD setup from within Vista (got to the section where it displays partitions then aborted before installing) did it allow me to boot from the DVD after a restart. I'll try it on my other machine just for kicks and let you know what happens.

[idata]

hey marty, i had no luck installing 7 over vista. infact, it made my ssd break. what firmware did you use and did you delete or see a 100mb partition during installation of 7? did you delete this 100 mb partition?

[idata]

Hi Busted -

Honestly I didn't pay attention to the 100mb partition, from what I read it can be safely removed after the install - I'll take a look for you next time I boot my W7 machine. I definitely did not explicity delete it.

Firmware was updated to 02HD prior to W7 install via CD, and it looks like W7 installed with the default AHCI drivers. Prior to install I unplugged all SATA cables other than SSD & CD/DVD.

Again my process was:

1) Set BIOS to boot first to CD/DVD

2) Boot, DVD spins a bunch then it still boots to my SSD Vista

3) Run DVD setup from within Vista, select custom install, it shows you the partition screen (and says reboot from DVD if you want to format)

4) Abort install, restart machine, now it does let me boot straight from DVD

5) Again, select custom install & get to partition screen, click format (showed 74.4/74.5gb available after format on X25M 80gb), then install

Good luck