Can you delete an OS off a drive without losing files

I recently Did a fresh intstall on a brand new hard drive with windows 7. now my old hard drive has vista installed on it and all the files id like to keep. Is there anyway to delete vista without deleteing all my precious files? Can I do it by booting thru windows 7 and just plugging the drive back in?

 

no your going to have to back them up on an external drive and then do a clean install, a clean install means that it wipes everything off of the thing and installs a new os while your precious files will be gone forever i would suggest a usb hard drive to store everything on then you can do a clean install, unless its crashed to the point where you can't access the os then run a live cd or usb with linux to access the drives to move all your files to your external storage and ynu have them in safety)

 

Yes,with the drive connected as a secondary drive navigate to the windows folder and delete it.

For the most space though you are better off copying your files to your win 7 harddrive,format the secondary drive then paste them all back to it.