Currently still on Windows 7 Professional.
 
Updates have never been applied, they were disabled by my supplier when I originally bought the machine in 2012
 
I want to upgrade to Win 10 and I intend to buy a new interface while I'm at it as Focusrite have stated there are no drivers for my existing one.
 
The current OS is installed on a 1TB SSD along with most of my sample libraries. I really do not want to touch these if at all possible.
 
So, what the best way to proceed? To start with, what's the preferred flavour of Win 10?
 
I've got Acronis installed so making backups prior to any sort of fiddling will be done naturally.
 
Thanks in advance.
 
 

1. Buy a 240gb drive for the OS.
2. Your other drive would make it a really nice system.
 
Everything on 1 SDD increases writes and wears it down.  Your 1 TB SSD will last a long time for streaming samples.

I've been very happy with Win 10 Pro....which also happens to be the only version of Win 10 I've had. From the little I've read, W10 Pro gives you much more options than the Home edition.

Yeah I'm definitely thinking Win 10 PRO
 
I'd rather do this without having to buy a new SSD and fiddling about inside.
 
What about my existing OS. Will this need to be updated first?

Bristol_Jonesey
Yeah I'm definitely thinking Win 10 PRO
 
I'd rather do this without having to buy a new SSD and fiddling about inside.
 
What about my existing OS. Will this need to be updated first?

I've only upgraded from Win (8) and 8.1 Pro to Win 10....which was extremely simple and very quick. I imagine it being the same from Win 7 to 10 (not sure if you have to have all the Win 7 updates prior to the Win 10 upgrade).
 
You can use the link below which will check your system to see what it needs before doing the upgrade.....I also have it ready on my desktop and will give it a shot tonight.
 
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-upgrade

Thanks for the link Mesh.
 
Will check this out later on.

There is a rumour Colin that you can get the 26 i/o to work in win 10 just need to get the legacy firewire driver to stick there are instructions on Microsoft's web site. I am intend to give it a go just need to get a long enough F/W cable to reach the I/F and the PC.

Hey that's interesting my furry friend.
 
Please let me know how you get on, so I can spend my birthday money on something else!!

FWIW, I have found that when performing OS upgrades (as with new builds), it could help eliminate some potential headaches if you leave most of your peripherals disconnected during the upgrade.
 
So, during the upgrade, you would want to have the obvious things like keyboard, mouse and external drives connected, but leave ancillary equipment (basically, any other external USB or Firewire devices, including the audio interface) disconnected. Once the OS upgrade is complete, plug in and install the external devices one at a time.
 
This will help you isolate any potential upgrade issues to a single device at time, and while it definitely helps with the troubleshooting, it might actually decrease the chances of multiple external devices causing problems during the upgrade.
 
This is an upgrade procedure that has worked quite well for me over the years with various Windows upgrades,  and as a result I have had very few hardware-related issues while upgrading.

If I had it to do over again, I would have unplugged my interface, midi keyboard, etc.  I think that was why my update took *forever*.  I think it all worked out in the end, though.