[Tril]

My OS drive is separated in three partitions. I've got Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 on those three partitions. That HDD broke down this week. Here's what happenned.

Actions of creating files and folders and of renaming files and folders suddenly started taking a lot of time (around a minute or two). I decided to reboot to see if it would solve the problem. The computer froze while booting Windows. I tried the other OSs and it also froze or produced blue screens so the problem was not solely with Windows 7. It also froze, blue screen or automatically rebooted even in safe mode.

I took that hard drive out of the computer and I put it in another computer. That other computer has a S.M.A.R.T. test utility in the bios. The drive fails the test. When I set it as the boot os in that second computer, it freezes or produces blue screens before completely booting Windows. It really looks like this drive is faulty but it still works partially. I might be able to recover some data later as long as it's not the OS drive.

I'm planning on reinstalling Windows 7 on another HDD. I've got a few HDDs in my computer with enough space for Windows 7 but none of them are completely empty. I'm wondering if a clean install of Windows wipes the content of an HDD or not. I need to know for sure before trying to do this. I don't want to lose all my data.

I ordered a 2TB HDD but I don't want to install Windows 7 on it. I prefer to install Windows on an old small drive and keep my data on the big HDD. The old small drive is more likely to fail and I prefer to lose Windows than some important data. It also makes it possible to format the OS drive without losing much data, if I ever want to do it.

We've got lots of experienced system builders here. Judas?

[mkk]

Any regular Windows 7/Vista/XP installation disc will not discard any data unless one manually chooses to format a partition/drive at the beginning of the installation. Only brand name recovery disks tend to do anything like that without asking.

In case you plan to have Windows XP installed on the same drive as well it will be easiest to install XP first and Windows 7 afterwards. Doing it the other way around leaves you with XP booting automatically without presenting an option on the startup.

[MitchRapp]

well, since you ordered a 2TB, wait for it and transfer your data to it just to be sure
backup backup backup. that's what I say.

[Judas]

PM sent reguarding this..... pretty much what MKK said

[Tril]

Thank you guys for your replies and Judas for the pm. I think I'll go through the installation without a backup. I'll go through it carefully to avoid agreeing if it asks me to format the HDD.

EDIT : There is something wrong with my pc and I think it might not be the OS drive. I left the previous OS drive unplugged. I installed Windows 7 to a HDD with enough free space. It first booted to windows, asked for the language and keyboard configuration. Then I left it alone and when I came back it was stuck on a black screen. I forced power off and rebooted. It stayed infinitely stuck on the animation of the Windows logo (waited about 15 to 30 minutes). When I try to boot to safe mode, it gets stuck while it is loading "C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\classpnp.sys". It did the same thing with my windows 7 install on the HDD I removed from the computer.

It is giving me the same problem with a clean install so it is not a problem with a faulty program or driver I installed.

The motherboard seems to work, at least in the bios. My motherboard has a feature that allows me to use internet from the bios and that is what I am currently using.

I tested the RAM yesterday. It passed one pass of memtest86+. I did not try to do more passes.

There might be something wrong with one usb device or pci device and it is freezing Windows. Or, the motherboard is starting to fail. That is the first time something like this happens to me.

I have had another computer that froze even in the bios and then it was clear that the motherboard was faulty. I replaced the motherboard and it fixed the problem. I do not want to go buy another motherboard when it is not clear if it is the source of the problem.

EDIT : I fixed my problem. The screen was black during the Windows install because I'm using an iZ3D monitor and Windows was outputting the video to the wrong panel (the iZ3D monitor has two panels). My new install of Windows was not working because I rebooted while it was not complete by mistake. I reinstalled again and it worked. Then I put my old OS drive in and booted from it. It asked me to repair it, I did and I used a restore point. I rebooted windows and all works fine now with my old HDD and my three OS. I only tried Windows 7 but the other two should work too.

Before all this happened, I installed Java 6 Update 18 64 bit and the latest version of Deamon Tools. One of those two programs might have modified a setting of the bios. I'm not installing them again for now. Before reinstalling, I reseted the settings of the bios to their default, I restarted, I changed the bios settings to disable all the chipset devices, I restarted, I reseted to the default again and I restarted. Everything worked after that. I don't know for sure if it's the real reason or not.