Fresh Install of Windows and how to go about the SSDs

[eye_moisturizer]

Hello! I had a question about how to go about the windows fresh install process if I wanna use the old storage devices

 

The fresh install process itself seems straightforward (download the media from microsoft and add it to a usb flash drive after youve formatted the flash drive, put the stick in new PC and install it to fresh storage device)

 

However, i have a 1tb m.2 drive, an empty 500 gb SATA drive, and a 2 TB HDD, and the 1TB m.2 drive has all my windows installation files as well as other program files and important stuff that i frequently access

 

Will a clean windows install require me to format that 1TB m.2 drive? (and thus necessitate some file backing up beforehand). Or would the windows installation media on the flash drive simply overwrite the old installation and leave the others intact? 

 

If the former, would it be a good idea to clone my 1tb drive to my 500gb drive with something like macrium reflect as a means of backing up? I actually used it the other way around to get the 500 gb contents to the 1tb drive

 

[cekcons]

you can leave the data on 1tb m2 if you make a seprate partition of data and delete rest of partitions. you can delete all data too if you want.

You dont need to format the m2 entirely but atleast some partitions. 

after install you can take data form that partition to desktop and delete that partition to make a whole partition again

hope it helps

[Altecice]

Unplug your drives with data on them, install fresh windows on your new drive, plug the drives back in. You may have to do some cleanup with old Windows folders on the disks but your data will be kept with no danger of it being wiped by a clean install/yourself. 

[eye_moisturizer]

8 hours ago, Altecice said:

Unplug your drives with data on them, install fresh windows on your new drive, plug the drives back in. You may have to do some cleanup with old Windows folders on the disks but your data will be kept with no danger of it being wiped by a clean install/yourself. 

that sounds like a good idea

 

I could just use the 500gb SATA as my fresh windows drive  since it's already empty 

 

Would it be possible to install the fresh windows on that sata drive, use a program like macrium reflect/CMD to delete the old windows partition on the m.2 drive, then clone the NEW windows partition from the sata to the m.2 drive?

[Altecice]

15 minutes ago, eye_moisturizer said:

that sounds like a good idea

 

I could just use the 500gb SATA as my fresh windows drive  since it's already empty 

 

Would it be possible to install the fresh windows on that sata drive, use a program like macrium reflect/CMD to delete the old windows partition on the m.2 drive, then clone the NEW windows partition from the sata to the m.2 drive?

 

Ahh I assumed your m.2 would be empty... You could do what you've suggested but it is quite a bit of effort. As @cekcons has suggested, it may be best to create a 2nd partition on the 1TB M.2. Install your fresh windows installation on that and then within your new Windows install, rename your previous Windows folder Windows.old and let Disk Cleanup remove it. You could then shuffle your data/partitions however you'd like.