[Burned Phoenix]

According to the test results that Chris Hernandez, a Microsoft Software Engineer, posted on his blog, Redmond managed to get the Windows 7 upgrade time to be faster or equal within the five percent threshold to the Vista SP1 upgrade time. Arstechnica have summarized the Windows 7 upgrade time results in the table below.



1,220 minutes is not a typo. The upgrade took 20 hours and 20 minutes with 650GB of data, 40 applications, on mid-end hardware, and during a 32-bit upgrade.

The other interesting point worth noting is that the 32-bit upgrade is faster on a clean install than a 64-bit upgrade, regardless of the hardware configuration, and is faster on low-end hardware, regardless of the Data Profile. In the other six cases, the 64-bit upgrade is faster than the 32-bit upgrade.

[Culprit]

Looks like mine is going to take 2 hours. I'm happy about that, when I upgraded my xp machine to vista it took like 3-4 hours!

[FalseAgent]

wow, people actually do an in-place upgrade?? Clean install FTW

[Culprit]

FalseAgent, on 13 September 2009 - 11:52 AM, said:

wow, people actually do an in-place upgrade?? Clean install FTW

I use upgrade because I have soo many programs installed which I don't feel like or have the time to reinstall each and every one.

[Ace Starr]

Yes we can understand your predicament but with all sorts of restrictions being put on upgrades (Why shouldn't we upgrade from vista ultimate to seven home premium?), there has never been a better incentive to wipe the drive clean and give the sys a new breath of life. And the problems of installing gazillions of apps all over again can be averted by using portables. (Atleast for the most part.)

[PurplePeopleEater]

Ace Starr, on 13 September 2009 - 03:19 PM, said:

Yes we can understand your predicament but with all sorts of restrictions being put on upgrades (Why shouldn't we upgrade from vista ultimate to seven home premium?), there has never been a better incentive to wipe the drive clean and give the sys a new breath of life. And the problems of installing gazillions of apps all over again can be averted by using portables. (Atleast for the most part.)

What I would do is make a dvd or cd with the installers for all the programs you use before a clean install so they're all there for you. I would also do the same with drivers, etc.

This post has been edited by PurplePeopleEater: 14 September 2009 - 01:57 AM

[Night Hawk]

I came across a similar article on how long it will take for any inplace upgrades from Vista to 7 seen at http://windows7news....de-performance/ There the two 32bit/64bit flavors have their own separate charts.

Personally I've spent too much time performing clean installs on fresh new primary partitions for any newer version of Windows. While testing 7 I performed a few inplace upgrade repair installs just to see how those would go spending a good 80min. or so when all programs were on.

I also threw a fast temp install on just to see how well the Windows Easy Transfer tool worked for restoring existing files and settings from a working installation onto the new temp install there. Right as the progress indicator is moving along slowly you suddenly see the wallpaper change on the temp install.

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[NealTheGuitarist]

Clean Install FTW!

[Night Hawk]

NealTheGuitarist, on 15 September 2009 - 10:09 AM, said:

Clean Install FTW!

Funny how that's always the preferred option when available! For those without at least a recovery disk on a system with a preinstalled OS that won't always be available however. That's the downside there.

[ThunderROM]

^ Right, I'll have to upgrade too.

[Night Hawk]

Someone asked me earlier about a need to reformat the main drive on one system where there's was quite a bit of personal data, various files, etc. pressently running the 32bit Vista Home Premium. The upgrade would be to the 7 Home Premium where the installer will simply pack up the Vista installation into the Windows.old folder.

The problem there however was how much drive space was already used up where one suggestion in order to preserve everything there would be to add in a new second drive set as default and set up a dual boot for the initial installation of 7. Later if Vista was abandoned that drive would then serve as a main storage device.

I had to make the comparisons of first seeing to that when Vista first came out with an XP/Vista dual boot across two drives later to end up first seeing that expanded to allow for testing the 7 beta builds.

[WhistAler]

I'm sure we will find a way to do the clean install with the Upgrade version

[Night Hawk]

I wouldn't doubt it! You would still need a disk from a previous version however when the installer prompts for it to verify you own a prior version however. That's the little catch seen with upgrade disk over spending more for a full version dvd.