Hard Drive Recommendations

Not clear of your whole setup there, but here's one suggestion (which I have done).

Get an external hard disk drive enclosure. Move your system drive into that. Put your new blank drive in your PC. I assume you have a DVD drive accessible.

Have a drive clone program. The one I use is Acronis. This is a hard disk drive backup utility (for one or more drives accessible to your machine, depending on what you ask it to backup or restore). Acronis has a feature of cloning a drive included in its feature set, which is why I mention it and why I've used it.

Clone your system drive from the external enclosure to your new blank drive. You boot from the DVD drive with your clone program on it, and the software helps you select what you need to do.

Should be painless.

I am of the clean install mindset as well since it is also a clean slate for the registry. I keep downloaded files on another drive to speed this up. In your situation I would install Win on the new HDD first (only drive installed), then add the old drive as a slave drive for data file recovery (if needed). I carry the same concern of a disk error being imaged to another drive.

The only thing that comes to mind is driver support. Some hardware stopped updating drivers at Win7, which should be checked before heading down the Win8 path. Otherwise I think it is more splitting hairs on which version to use.

SteveGriffiths
Thanks for the advice.  If I go the clean route, where are we on Win 7 vs Win 8 (I have an MSDN licence so can use whatever I want)
 
Cheers
 
Grif
 

 
The other issue is that Windows 7 reaches the end of "mainstream support" in 4 days on Jan 13. What that means is that no new features will be added. So if someone invents thought control for your computer after that date, Microsoft will not be obliged to write a thought control interface for Windows 7. Windows 8.1 would, however be eligible for a free update to enable you to post cat pictures without moving your muscles. Security patches for Win 7 should be available until the end of "extended support" on 1/14/2020, but "hotfixes" will not be available without a special support subscription. 

I would update all programs
  make lots of notes about hardware
   find and download drivers for w7
    find and save drivers for w8 to external source
 
Use the sonar plugin manager to export all presets saved using the sonar preset format.
 
Image the disk.
 
Get a new disk, install, install window 8.1.1, and all updates.
 Install the hardware drivers previously downloaded.
 
Once done, image again.
 
Windows 8.1.1 can be configured to mostly never show the start walls of unhappiness.
 
Starting anew: I recommend windows 8+ for next 3+ years
 
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Last time I did this took more than a month to get all software installed and usable. Limited time, dual boot, clean install on new disk" :: for me: install adobe, java,... configure windows to use desktop programs, install office and all updates and configure (I use spreadsheets for most all lyrics and tracking of projects and notes), install a many sonar versions and updates, and import sonar presets, install 3rd party programs, instruments and tools and conversion utilities, and so on.
 
Image again.
 
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When ready, use the manufacture's disk utility to write zeros to the original disk.  I have "saved," and "rehabilitated," disks indicating failure by doing this.

TerraSin
For HDD I use exclusively Western Digital Black Drives. They are very very good drives with a very good warranty (5 years). As far as speed goes, they are high performance 7200. Even when I do go SSD, I'll be using black drives as my backup and sample storage.

I totally agree with you.
 
I've been using WD Blacks for several years now and so far, touching anything remotely resembling wood, I've not had a single problem with them.
 
Maxtor on the other hand, I had 3 different ones die on me over a period of about 18 months which is WAY outside the curve of "expected failure rate"
 
 
Stupid question - and one I should really know the answer to by now - but if you reformat your system drive, your BIOS settings remain untouched yes? This is all held on the battery backed CMOS motherboard chips isn't it?
 
I'm planning well ahead here and might, maybe next year, do a complete system rebuild.

+1 on the WD black drives.

Heads up NewEgg has WD Black 2TB 7200 drives for $120 today only.

It's because of the way they are designed. More platters = more points of possible failure. That said, I have a 4TB drive that (knock on wood) works fine for my media storage.

strikinglyhandsome1
What SSD brand are the DAW makers using?

If I were a gambling man, I'd bet they're be using Samsung's......they've been proven to be very reliable......(now where's that piggy bank at??) 

I'm thinking I might pick up a Samsung SSD and another black drive soon. Kinda waiting on sales again

It is easiest to attach the disk to another computer to not boot from it.
Copy what you can.
Run scandisk    it may just be a corrupt file system
get the manufacturers tool for testing

Not to hijack but which of these (or any others in this price range) would you guys get?
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/937663-REG/seagate_st1000dx001_1tb_7200rpm_3_5_sata.html

 
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1041394-REG/wd_wdbsla0010hnc_nrsn_1tb_internal_drive_for.html

TerraSin
Western Digital. I'll probably never use Seagate again.

Thanks, I've heard others dissing Seagate also...that said I have 3 of which 2 are more than 8 years old but maybe I've just been lucky : )

aoresteen
WD drives are the way to go but why so big?  An OS boot drive should not be your recording or media storage drives. It should just hold the OS & programs.
 
I use a 250GB drive with a 40GB boot partition (I'm still on XP) for my DAW.  It's got 25GB on it and 15GB free.  With Win 7 or 8 I'd go with an 100 GB boot partition.  The rest of the drive is just for data files & progam install files.  My recording drive is  a 10,000 RPM 36GB SCSI.  I also have a 1TB media storage drive and 4 TB network server drive.  Not to mention a 2TB USB3 backup drive and a couple of USB3 500GB portable drives.
 
What ever you do do not use Seagate drives!  Not worth the risk.

I guess you didn't notice my sig... I use a 180GB Corsair Force series 3 SSD for my OS/programs along with several (older, slower) drives.
This will be for libraries that have been taxing some of those older drives.
Thanks,
Randy