I performed a clean installation of 32bit Windows 7 Beta over a 32 bit Windows XP Professional system. I am downloading the 64bit version of Windows 7 Beta and would like to install it.I have two hard drives in the system. All space on all drives was written by a 32 bit OS, XP Pro. On the first drive, 160GB, I have a partition that is 20GB where the new 32bit OS, Win 7 Beta resides. The second drive is 130GB.What happens if I install 64 bit Windows 7 Beta on the system in the 20GB partition?Are the 32bit drives/partitions going to be visible? Will 64bit and 32bit files reside next to each other on the same 32bit drive in the same file system? Will the new files be readable by a 32bit OS? Is there any way to migrate the data to the 64bit OS without first moving the data to DVDs? Once I access the drives with the 64bit OS will they then become unreadable by 32bit, XP Pro or Windows 7 Beta?

The file system remains NTFS, so so you don't have to migrate your files.Microsoft MVP - Group Policy

You can't install the 64bit version on the 20GB partition without formatting it as you can't upgrade from 32 to 64bit Windows 7.

If you install win7 x64 select the upgrade option and this will create a windows.old directory of your win7 x32 along with user settings and files. Then you can use the User State Migration Tool that comes with the WAIK to transfer the files and settings from windows.old to the x64 windows. Upon completion you use the disk cleanup tool to clean the window.old directory.To err is human to really foul things up it takes a computer.