Upgrading win 72 32bit to win 10 64 bit

[jetpack1976]

Hi Techies/ Experts,

Need some information and advice to upgrade bootcamp win 7 to win 10. 32 bit to 64 bit.

I am using the 2015 mac mini, 8gig ram, i5 with 1TB HD.

Current setup:-

Win 7 bootcamp 32 bit version
Using mainly MS office and email. No games or heavy professional products.

Problem Areas:

Cannot upgrade from 32bit to 64 bit system without a complete reinstall of windows. Option is to backup and migrate windows apps and information. However, this is tedious and I cannot afford to lose any information.

I am thinking of 2 solutions:-

Option 1

To buy and use the Paragon backup to migrate data to NAS storage and do a complete reinstall and restore from backup

Option 2

To buy and use Parallel VM and do a win 10 install in VM mode. Then slowly transfer the files from bootcamp drive .

My main concern are the document word files, excel files, outlook plist file and customer pdfs that were saved all over the place.

I need some advice on the following:-

Bootcamp windows should in theory run faster and more efficiently then windows in VM mode. True or False?

If I were to run in VM mode, Can I access the bootcamp drive like a normal harddisk partition and just copy files to the parallel VM windows? I understand that apps and programs cannot be done and need to be reinstalled. I am just worried if I realise I needed an old file, can I just click the MY Computer and access the bootcamp drive like a normal partition?

I understand running VM mode will have extra cost. But do you guys think its worth it to forsake the performance and increase in costing to have easier access to my existing files?

I sound too long winded. Hope all the techies and expert can shed some light in this topic or do you have a better recommendation for me to do a easier upgrade and migration.

Thanks for reading

 

[Shirasaki]

First you need to fix your title because there is no 62bit OS.
Then, regarding your issue, since as you know, it is impossible to install 64bit on top of 32bit, you need other methods to save data and migrate to 64bit OS. I am afraid parallel does not allow you to restore 32bit windows backup on top of 64bit windows.
Second method, which using VM to do so is preferable. You then need to slowly move all your documents to that VM.
You can access boot camp partition as a normal partition. But I do so using paragon NTFS driver. Don't remember if it is possible to access NTFS Bootcamp in Mac OS X in read-only mode.
Running VM would not make your file access process easier. But it does help moving your files out of your bootcamp partiton.

 

[maflynn]

I understand running VM mode will have extra cost. But do you guys think its worth it to forsake the performance and increase in costing to have easier access to my existing files?

If you find yourself wanting to access OS X and Windows at the same time, or to put it another way, not wanting to boot out of OS X and into Windows then yes Virtualization is worth it.

While not as feature rich, but still a good application, you can use VirtualBox which is free, vs. Parallels and VMware.