Partitioning and installing windows 7 questions

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iamfett

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I have 2 hard drives. 1st one is partitioned with XP and programs and the rest is media.
2nd drive is used for back ups of the second partition (media, photos, drivers, program files, etc.) of the first drive (second partition) in case of a reformat/reinstall.

I would like to try out Windows 7.
My question is can I add another partition to drive 1 (that would be 3 partitions now)?
And can I do it as is, or do I have to reformat the drive to create this other partition then reinstall XP and all the programs to the 1st partition AND all the media to the 2nd?

Free tools to do this appreciated.
 
I am more familiar with Vista, but I would assume you can use Disk Management to shrink the XP partition and install 7 in the un-partitioned space it creates. The 7 bootloader takes over and gives you the option of which OS you want to boot into.
 
You can always create another partition, but I personally don't like going over one partition per drive. Do you need to test out 3D games in Windows 7, or are you planning on just trying out the OS, and seeing if your software is compatible with it. If so, a VM would be a much better option, as you don't need to make any system changes to your current setup.
 
DeaconFrost said:
You can always create another partition, but I personally don't like going over one partition per drive. Do you need to test out 3D games in Windows 7, or are you planning on just trying out the OS, and seeing if your software is compatible with it. If so, a VM would be a much better option, as you don't need to make any system changes to your current setup.
Click to expand...

Not trying out 3d games, just want to try out 7 OS, why?
Tell me more about this VM ( virtual machine I assume your talking about, right?).
I wasn't even sure/didn't know if you could make more than 1 partition on a drive, that's why I was asking.
 
iamfett said:
Not trying out 3d games, just want to try out 7 OS, why?
Tell me more about this VM ( virtual machine I assume your talking about, right?).
I wasn't even sure/didn't know if you could make more than 1 partition on a drive, that's why I was asking.
Click to expand...

You can make as many partitions as you wish on a single drive. Just keep in mind that it will lower it's performance.

As for VM, basically it's a sandbox. You clone your operating system in a VM environment and test software on it, and if it works, put it in production. If it doesn't, don't. Best thing about VM is that if a software ends up crashing your clone indefniitely because of compatibility issues or whatever, you can just wipe the clone and remake it. Your real OS is safe.

There's quite a few free VM clients out there. vmware.com is a good start. Microsoft also makes a VM client but the name escapes me at the moment.
 
FYI 7 actually creates 2 partitions with default installation. One is a 200MB boot partition that you can only see in Disk Manager and Defragger.
 
Azhar said:
You can make as many partitions as you wish on a single drive. Just keep in mind that it will lower it's performance.

As for VM, basically it's a sandbox. You clone your operating system in a VM environment and test software on it, and if it works, put it in production. If it doesn't, don't. Best thing about VM is that if a software ends up crashing your clone indefniitely because of compatibility issues or whatever, you can just wipe the clone and remake it. Your real OS is safe.

There's quite a few free VM clients out there. vmware.com is a good start. Microsoft also makes a VM client but the name escapes me at the moment.
Click to expand...

OK tell me more. this VM thing is new to me.
But being a sandbox, if I reboot everything's gone, right?
 
iamfett said:
OK tell me more. this VM thing is new to me.
But being a sandbox, if I reboot everything's gone, right?
Click to expand...

No. The VM is saved as a virtual HDD. You boot it up and shut it down just like any other machine, but inside the software.
 
You run the software inside of a shell, and if you have a compatible processor, it runs natively on the CPU...not some emulation layer. The software to do so is free, and you can install the OS right from the .iso file, which makes it very quick. You don't ever need to mess around with partitions or altering boot sectors either, which keeps your host (main) system clean. Take a look at VirtualBox. The software is extremely easy to use.

And as a side note, yes, many of us have plenty of tests for a new OS that don't involve gaming.
 
Thanks, all of you.
This is why I became a Hardforum member.

You helped me build a good computer.
You helped me learn to overclock it.

Now your helping me learn other things I didn't know I could do with it.
And just think, some people only surf the web. :rolleyes:

Keep it up fokes.

As far as "If I have a compatable CPU..." see sig, do I?
"The software to do so is free" What /which software, Virtualbox?

Sorry about the questions, just trying to learn/do something new.

Thanks again.
 
Hard drives get slower the deeper into the platters that you move. The outer edges of the platters - the beginning of the drive in terms of storage locations - is the fastest, and as you move inward the speeds slow down, not only for random access time (heads have to move much further from their standby position just off the outside of the platters) but also for sheer data transfer speed (outer edges move more data in the same space than the inner tracks do).

The idea of creating partitions for designated purposes is a convenience thing, really, more of an organizational desire for most people, plus it also makes it easier to back up just the OS/system partition all by itself for later restoration as required.

If a person (say me, for example) has a 500GB drive, and I assign the first 100GB of it for the system/OS partition and the rest for storage, and install games on that second partition, the performance of those games - while still fine for most purposes - will technically suffer because the fastest speeds of the drive lie on that first 100GB partition.

Simple.
 
One partition = one MFT, easy to get to, basically.

Two partitions (or more) = more than one MFT, so performance takes a hit, automagically, when accessing files on the secondary or other partitions.

Hence, partitioning can decrease performance based on usage patterns dramatically. As noted, it's a convenience thing more designed for organizational purposes than performance. A single partition drive will perform better when accessing deep-placed data than a multi-partitioned drive will accessing the same data on a deep-placed partition.

Seems pretty simple to me...
 
Joe Average said:
One partition = one MFT, easy to get to, basically.
Click to expand...

But what if its a terabyte drive with only one partition? If you fill up that drive the MFT is going to get hugh. You can end up w/ multiple MFT's with only a single partition which will hurt performance too.
 
If you've got so much shit on a 1TB drive that you're using more than 120GB of space for the MFT to hold it (MFT reserves ~12% of a drive's capacity by default) then you need to get rid of some shit... :D That's a ton of file entries...
 
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