best upgrade path from winxp/pclos to win7/pclos

[meterbox]

Hello all

Sorry if this has been posted before, I searched and couldn't find anything.

Current situation is a dual boot winxp/pclos on a single 500gb hard drive.  It is time to replace winxp with win7 for work applications.  I see 2 options:

1) reformat winxp partition and install win7

or

2) purchase new hard drive for win7 only, and then remove winxp from pclos drive, reallocating space to pclos.

Does anyone have any opinions or thoughts on which would be the best course of action?  Are there any "gotchyas" with either option?

Below is fdisk -l output:  

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x27dc27dc

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *          63   409593239   204796588+   7  HPFS/NTFS  windows xp 195gb
/dev/sda2       409593240   976768064   283587412+   5  Extended   ??
/dev/sda5       409593303   434783159    12594928+  83  Linux   pclos /  12gb
/dev/sda6       434783223   442960244     4088511   82  Linux swap / Solaris   swap 3.8gb
/dev/sda7       442960308   976768064   266903878+  83  Linux  pclos/home 254gb

Thanks in advance

[Old-Polack]

Hello all

Sorry if this has been posted before, I searched and couldn't find anything.

Current situation is a dual boot winxp/pclos on a single 500gb hard drive.  It is time to replace winxp with win7 for work applications.  I see 2 options:

1) reformat winxp partition and install win7

or

2) purchase new hard drive for win7 only, and then remove winxp from pclos drive, reallocating space to pclos.

Does anyone have any opinions or thoughts on which would be the best course of action?  Are there any "gotchyas" with either option?

Below is fdisk -l output:  

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x27dc27dc

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *          63   409593239   204796588+   7  HPFS/NTFS  windows xp 195gb
/dev/sda2       409593240   976768064   283587412+   5  Extended   ??
/dev/sda5       409593303   434783159    12594928+  83  Linux   pclos /  12gb
/dev/sda6       434783223   442960244     4088511   82  Linux swap / Solaris   swap 3.8gb
/dev/sda7       442960308   976768064   266903878+  83  Linux  pclos/home 254gb

Thanks in advance

Back in the days when I still had a Windows installation, I always ran Windows from its own dedicated drive, mounted as the second, third, or fourth drive in the hard drive chain. This insures that each OS can boot either as part of the hard drive chain, or as an independent drive, should the other(s) be removed for any reason. This also prevents any Windows upgrades from overwriting the grub boatloader on the MBR(s) of the dedicated Linux drive(s).

[ThirdOfSix]

I agree with Old-Polack.

I almost always put Windows on its own drive.

I just don't trust Windows or the other malware associated with it to reside on my main drive.

On this machine, which is quad core and fast, I run Windows in VirtualBox in order to watch NetFlix movies.

The only time I set up Windows for dual boot is when I am trying to ween a Windows user from it.