Installing Windows 10

[ngkhtom]

My laptop consists of a 320GB harddisk of which C drive is 100GB with Windows 7 installed & D drive is 220 GB of Data. If I install Windows 10 on my C drive, will my D drive be left intact or will it be formatted/deleted?

 

[Colif]

If you just install win 10 over win 7 then you get to keep your other partition - it just uses what is already there

If you did a fresh install, windows 10 would want you to wipe entire hdd and restart the installer before it would install as Win 10 uses a different partitioning system to win 7 and won't install on the old method (http://www.howtogeek.com/193669/whats-the-difference-between-gpt-and-mbr-when-partitioning-a-drive/)

So good thing you asked

 

[SkyNetRising]

If I install Windows 10 on my C drive, will my D drive be left intact or will it be formatted/deleted?

You mean upgrade - right?
Upgrade doesn't format anything. But you may be asked to delete some win10 incompatible software.

 

[ngkhtom]

If you just install win 10 over win 7 then you get to keep your other partition - it just uses what is already there

If you did a fresh install, windows 10 would want you to wipe entire hdd and restart the installer before it would install as Win 10 uses a different partitioning system to win 7 and won't install on the old method (http://www.howtogeek.com/193669/whats-the-difference-between-gpt-and-mbr-when-partitioning-a-drive/)

So good thing you asked

Thanks Colif for your insightful answer. I have my W7 product key and I intend to install W10 by from USB flash drive so would this be considered a clean install and thus have to re-partition the entire harddisk or need not and just install it in my C drive, leaving D drive intact?

 

[Colif]

Do you have Win 7 on the drive yet? If yes, and you don't do a custom install, then its just an upgrade and you keep everything as is.

If c drive is empty then its a fresh install and you be best to copy stuff off D before proceeding.

If you do a custom install and wipe C before installing Win 10 then its a fresh and it will want you to clear all drive before proceeding

this might help later too: http://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/1950-windows-10-clean-install.html