Windows 7 Upgrades Could Take Over 20 Hours

[A Cheese Danish]

I don't know if this will be posted or not, but according to the wonderful people over at Maximum, PC state,

According to a new study released by Microsoft software engineer Chris Hernadez, upgrade times can range wildly depending upon your hardware configuration, and the amount of data it needs to migrate during the install.

It is understandable, and only two seem to really go a tad beyond 10 hours,
but if you look at the chart, I wouldn't think it would be this bad...


That looks pretty bad for some people willing to upgrade their systems with more than 1TB of files/data/programs.
I seriously hope it won't take as long as they say...That would just be ridiculous.




Source: Maximum PC

[pantherx12]

It does not take that long : /

I done an upgrade in the Heavy User sort of range, with mid end hardware, and it took 30-40 minutes : /

Obviously this was with the Beta but it be ridiculous if it took that long .

[A Cheese Danish]

Well, I'm not saying it's what I believe, just spreading some news about what MS says.
I wouldn't think the average computer would take more than 2 hours to upgrade...

[AKlass]

I did An Upgrade last night from Vista, It took about 4 hours

[pantherx12]

That sounds about right for your system.

Mine was using

Intel e5200@ 3.4ghz
4gb Corsair ddr3 ram @ 1600mhz
and a sata HDD.

[beyond_amusia]

I cannot comment on 7 per se, but I've seen upgrades from 98 SE and Me to XP SP2 that took a few hours, so not too unbelievable. I always do a clean install for maximum performance, so I did not have to experience a long wait to get an OS loaded on.

[newtekie1]

Never, I repeat NEVER do an in place upgrade!

[human_error]

Yeah i guess it could take that long, but then again it could take 10 mins to boot vista on a machine with a nackered hard drive (giving lots of errors) and decent specs otherwise - so i'd take these figures with a pinch of salt.

If you had a 1tb hdd with only 10gb of free space on it (taking the install size into account for win7) then it would take a VERY long time to get the upgrade completed on a single core machine with a small amount of ram.

To be fair enthusiasts (and everyone else to be honest, if only people knew how&why) should be doing clean installs anyway as it will run better afterwards - i've been using a seperate partition for my OS away from everything else in my system for a few years now and it makes re-installs a breeze - most my apps don't need re-installing on a new OS and those few that do can be done in a couple of hours so it's no biggie.

[SonDa5]

After a few failed attempts doing a RAID 0 clean install, I figured out how to install it and took about 20 minutes on my system.

[exodusprime1337]

yeah i never do an upgrade, always do a clean install, maybe for the average home user an upgrade is feasable but for a power user, i feel that there is to much done to an os to "upgrade" it, service and registry tweaks, software hacks, performance changes, anything and not to mention possible driver issues.

[AsRock]

Originally Posted by A Cheese Danish

I don't know if this will be posted or not, but according to the wonderful people over at Maximum, PC state,


It is understandable, and only two seem to really go a tad beyond 10 hours,
but if you look at the chart, I wouldn't think it would be this bad...
http://www.maximumpc.com/files/u4617...etimesfull.png

That looks pretty bad for some people willing to upgrade their systems with more than 1TB of files/data/programs.
I seriously hope it won't take as long as they say...That would just be ridiculous.

Source: Maximum PC

Sounds like crap...

For example 125Gb ? (should that not be GB lol). But anyways 40 apps what space these apps taking ?.. Like i have 30-40 apps install and take less than 10GB. But you could have other apps that take much more space than that.

I think it just depends on apps that you have installed condition of of the HDD like if it needs defraged and what hardware config you have.

[Mussels]

the numbers are fudged. they're talking about that much data being in windows folders - desktop, program files, and so on.

i dont know anyone in the RW still using single partitions (well, a few lanners) for reasons just like this.

Fresh install ftw! (< 15 minutes via flash drive)

[A Cheese Danish]

Originally Posted by AsRock

Sounds like crap...

For example 125Gb ? (should that not be GB lol). But anyways 40 apps what space these apps taking ?.. Like i have 30-40 apps install and take less than 10GB. But you could have other apps that take much more space than that.

I think it just depends on apps that you have installed condition of of the HDD like if it needs defraged and what hardware config you have.

Yeah. I was thinking they just used base models of computers sold in retail stores and guesstimated.

But yeah I agree that it all depends on the hardware you are upgrading and what you currently have installed.
I think the chart is more of a basis of what to expect rather than the actual time to upgrade.

[SkyKast]

very very good point, I dont even think about the app size, that is a huge generalization

this could easily be faked

[Mussels]

as they say "amount of data migrated"

its backing up/relocating all your data to install windows, and then moving it to the relevant folders in 7 - so that if the install is cancelled or undone, it still has backups.

moving 650GB of data only takes a few hours, to be honest... but if they're moving it 2-3 times, yeah, it could take a while.

[madmanjohn]

Speaking for my apps and such. I would never use migration. Everytime i do this its always a clean install, however, i do run appox 45 different apps.

i also have to install several pre requisites for some of the apps such as DX SDK and visual C++ both x86 and x64

I can do all of the above, including MS office, Adobe acrobat and photoshop, Nero 9 and all my other apps in just under 2 hours

thats running the rc,

the enterprise trial was even less.

in my own personal rig i usually have to do this about once every 20 days, I am using 2 trial versions of high priced software that i am not fully capable of buying quite yet.

i keep one folder for all my documents and such located in the named folder which I can move off to another internal drive in about a minute. this has all my keys, and reg entries and backups in it. and most of my exe's that dont have to run from a disc, plus all my IE shortcuts from my favorites folder, and my audio and video and lighting interface drivers.

this unit also has four internal drives. the c drive is a seagate 7200.11 250 gig which i write to zeros about every 3rd reboot. the only thing on it is the OS. i even outboard my pagefile which i run at 10.24 gig on the seagate 1tb internal. the reason i do this is to get the full benefit of the 32mb built in cache instead of wasting it using pagefile.

I also disable system restore and hibernation. fully installed and running im only using appox 20gb. ironic for a 250 gb drive but short of running a SSD, thats the smallest drive with a 32 mb cache out there i know of.

I will be trying the OCX Vertex for my Bday in nov- makes a lot more sense. so i do it this way because of the budget.


If that sounds insane you should see this thing fly.

Ive said this for years and swear by it- NOTHING i mean NOTHING runs faster or better than a freshly rebooted Clean OS.

If some of you knew how many junk files and old logs and stuff you wind up getting back using migration you would never do it that way. not to mention zero length empty folders.

everything in windows must index- and they only slow everything down.

During one of our live shows i need every bit of power and speed this thing has.

One thing i dont miss about the old days is back in windows xp, i would always have to pull all my pci cards, and my internal drives to reboot.

thank god they did away with that mess.

the other alternative i use is norton ghost, but even that dont run like a clean re-install.

[Wile E]

Originally Posted by newtekie1

Never, I repeat NEVER do an in place upgrade!

Doesn't matter anymore. Vista and 7 both don't actually upgrade anything. They just move the entire old install of Windows into a folder called Windows.old. It then proceeds to do a clean install.

As for this test, Why the hell would anyone have 650GB of data on the same partition as their windows install? Any smart user keeps their data on a separate partition from windows.

[Frick]

Originally Posted by Wile E

As for this test, Why the hell would anyone have 650GB of data on the same partition as their windows install? Any smart user keeps their data on a separate partition from windows.

Most people don't do that afaik. They place everything on the desktop or in My Docs.

[madmanjohn]

Originally Posted by Wile E

Doesn't matter anymore. Vista and 7 both don't actually upgrade anything. They just move the entire old install of Windows into a folder called Windows.old. It then proceeds to do a clean install.

As for this test, Why the hell would anyone have 650GB of data on the same partition as their windows install? Any smart user keeps their data on a separate partition from windows.

Thats exactly where im at-its not like the old days when a 320 gb hard drive was 300$- hard drives are pretty cheap these days for the amount stored. just get a separate c drive and keep it clean.

unless your running a lap, and if your doing more than 650gb on a lappy then theres more than one reason it takes so long.

[Wile E]

Originally Posted by Frick

Most people don't do that afaik. They place everything on the desktop or in My Docs.

Anybody that savvy enough to use 650GB of data, is savvy enough to do it on a separate partition. lol.

[Frick]

Originally Posted by Wile E

Anybody that savvy enough to use 650GB of data, is savvy enough to do it on a separate partition. lol.

Naaahhh, I have relatives and friends with that amount of data (torrenting bliss i tells ya!) and they're not savvy at all. They tend to spend a lot of time looking for the things they download as they have no clue where everything is..

[Wile E]

Originally Posted by Frick

Naaahhh, I have relatives and friends with that amount of data (torrenting bliss i tells ya!) and they're not savvy at all. They tend to spend a lot of time looking for the things they download as they have no clue where everything is..

Well then, you fail as a tech savvy friend/relative, for not teaching them the ways of the separate data partition. lol.

[madmanjohn]

more than likely - sometimes getting more than they bargained for too ill bet

[Frick]

Originally Posted by Wile E

Well then, you fail as a tech savvy friend/relative, for not teaching them the ways of the separate data partition. lol.

[Wile E]

Thinking about it, if I did ever have that much on my Windows partition, and I wanted to upgrade to 7, I think I would just buy a new HDD, and put 7 on that. lol.