Partitioning a hard drive

[Iowabucks]

Hey everyone. This should be a fairly easy question.

I am going to swap hardrives (80gb to 500gb) and switch from XP to Vista. Have been reading alot of Vista tweak guides and i think i want to partition my drive. I have no experience in this, and my whole experience in computers itself is fairly new. I have read a couple articles on partitioning while installing Vista and i have a few questions.

I would like to put Vista on partition 0 and make that 25gb in size.
I thought about making another 20gb partiton just in case i want to try out Windows 7.
Make another 150gb partition for games.
And another 100gb for pics, videos and mp3's.

Does it make sense doing it this way? I could never fill up my 80gig drive, i'm going even bigger now.

Questions:
1. Will these all be shown as separate drives when finished?
2. If so, when installing games, i just need to put it into the right partition, or drive, right?
3. If i installed Win 7 later, i just install it on partiton 1, and during bootup it should ask me which OS to boot up on?
4. If at a later time i want to add another drive, i wouldn't need to install Vista, right? but would need to wipe it clean somehow?

Sorry for all the questions. The more i read on this subject, the more questions i have. Just want to get it right before i try this in another week or so. Thanks, Jerry.

[DonDon]

To answer your questions, yes, yes, not sure, and no.

25 GB is very small for an OS partition these days. When I setup my 500 gig drive last year to dual boot XP and Vista, I gave each OS 100 gig, and left the rest as a data partition which I never use as all of my data is on a NAS.

There is little need to install the games outside of the OS partition cause if you reinstall the OS, you will need to reinstall all of your applications anyway. The only thing you need to save outside of the OS is the save games.

You can create a partition and leave it blank to install a second OS to at a later date. Just leave plenty of room because MS ain't making things any smaller.

Now, when you mention adding another drive, are you wanting to know about replacing the boot drive, or just adding a data drive?

Don

[Iowabucks]

Now, when you mention adding another drive, are you wanting to know about replacing the boot drive, or just adding a data drive?

Don


It will be a data drive. If i add one later, it will be my old one full of data that neds wiped. How would i go about wiping it?

Or, if i hook both up for the fresh format, will vista wipe them both clean, but put the OS on just the partition i want in the first drive?

[DonDon]

With the Vista (and XP) installer, you can select the drive you want to install to, wipe out any old partitions, and select the size of the partition you want to create for the new partition.

I suggest having only your boot drive in the computer when you install Windows.

Any new data drives you add after the fact will not affect your Vista install.

You should be able to read any old data on the drive, but if you want to start clean, just right click on the drive in My Computer, and selct Format and follow the prompts.

Don

[Iowabucks]

Ok, Thanks for all the quick replies Don. I am starting to understand this more.

One other question. If i Install Vista on a new 500gb HD, would i be able to also, at a later date, plug in my 80gb HD with XP (full of data and XP for the OS) and use it as an extra drive? And then have a dual boot computer? Or are there many other things to do to make it a true dual boot computer.

Only reason i ask is if i have any compatibility problems with Vista, i may want to have XP also on the other drive to run any programs that Vista wouldn't run.

Is that a simple thing to do, or alot more complicated then that?

[DonDon]

I am currently dual booting XP and Vista. I set my system up about a year ago, so I don't remember exactly how I did it. Just search the net for "Dual boot Vista and XP" and you should find directions on how to do it.

What I did was first create 2 X 100 GIG partitions on my 500 gig drive. Then I installed XP in the first partition, and then Vista in the second. I then had to make some changes that I do not remember the specifics on to access the XP install.

I would do something like that if I was you. It is better to keep things as simple as possible.

Don