Install Windows 8 on top of Windows 7

[thomja]

I for one think that Windows 7 is way more superior to windows 8. But there comes times when money becomes a bigger issue for game developers and Microsoft has the gift of it. So I REALLY want to try out a game called Project Spark. I have a beta key for it but the devs made it windows 8 only!

So in my PC I have this:

SSD: Windows 7 + some other stuff
HDD 2TB: Windows 7 + steam games + After Effect files etc etc etc
HDD 1TB (5200 RPM): Basically a place where I store crap that I have downloaded.

Now I want to install Windows 8 on my 2TB HDD. I want to keep the folders that are in there the way they are because some of them are linked to some programs on my SSD like Steam for example. But I don't want the old Windows 7 OS. Is there a way for me to replace just windows 7 with Windows 8 while keeping the folders in the root of the drive?

Thanks

 

[bryonhowley]

Yes it can be done. If you install Windows 8 onto a drive/partition that already has a Windows install then the installer will move the Windows,Program Files,Program Files (x86),ProgramData,and Users folder to a new folder called Windows.old. It will then continue with the install. After the install is done you can remove the Windows.old folder with the Disk Cleanup app.

 

[thomja]

Yes it can be done. If you install Windows 8 onto a drive/partition that already has a Windows install then the installer will move the Windows,Program Files,Program Files (x86),ProgramData,and Users folder to a new folder called Windows.old. It will then continue with the install. After the install is done you can remove the Windows.old folder with the Disk Cleanup app.

So the installer won't touch the folders that does not have anything to do with windows? I thought that it just put everything that was on the drive into the windows.old folder.

But with the risk of going alittle off-topic. I tried this and I recieved the message

"Windows 8 cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk has an MBR partition table. On EFI systems, Windows can only be installed to GP disks."

I was that I can just make a new partition from that HDD and install Windows 8 on that partition. But I still need to convert the partition to a GP partition. I googled some on found out that I could press F10 to enter the command prompt and enter

DISKPART > select disk 0
DISKPART > clean
DISKPART > convert gpt

Will the clean command clean my entire disk or just the partition?

Thanks