Question about partitioning and Windows 7

[da233]

Until now, I've never partitioned my HD at all, just kept my OS and everything in one large partition. However, since I now need to partition my HD in order to dual boot between Vista and Windows 7, I have some questions.

First of all, how big should my W7 partition be? It says you need a minimum of 16GB.

I'm also a little confused about which partition I'm supposed to install my programs in. Am I just supposed to leave the OS partition alone and install EVERYTHING else (games, applications, music, videos) on a different partition? Should I literally NEVER use the extra space in my OS partition? Will I experience some kind of performance lost (as minor as it may be) if I don't install my games in my OS partition?

Also, will I need to reinstall my programs after I install Windows 7 in it's own partition? Or will I be able to access my programs on my current (vista) HD, which is only 1 partition with the OS and everything else installed on it.

I'm sure some of these questions are very noobish but any help would be appreciated.

 

[Joe Average]

First rule of beta operating systems: don't use 'em on your primary/everyday/production PC, that's just how it goes. If you can't install this on a machine all by itself, perhaps using it in a VM with VirtualBox or VMWare would be the better solution in your situation.

It is possible, but because it's beta, and because Windows 7 changes the way it sits on a drive even from Vista, it's just not recommended in a dual boot situation (my recommendation, and many other people say the same thing).

If you're going to use Windows 7 by itself, just give it the whole drive... that's my recommendation at this point, unless we're talking about a 1TB or 1.5TB drive that has nothing else on it.

16GB is the minimum to get it installed, but it will grow fast because of updates, etc. I'm upping my normal recommendation from Vista to Windows 7 and saying give Windows 7 80GB minimum which should be quite enough for any machine for some time. 80GB minimum for the OS itself, with some other apps if you wish, etc, but not everything.

Good luck...

 

[da233]

Thanks for the explanation.

I'm curious about how exactly partitions interact with each other on the same hard drive. If I were to install Windows 7 on a partition, am I SUPPOSED to install all the programs and games on the same partition? Will there be a performance loss (even a small one) if I install and play games on a different partition on the same hard drive?

Is the reason you're recommending 80GB for the Windows 7 partition because I'm supposed to install all my apps and games in it too? Because until now, I've basically read just to make a partition for windows and install everything else on a different partition. Is that actually a bad thing to do?

 

[DonDon]

Well, unless you are going to be testing hundreds of applications, it is best to install your apps to your OS drive. You just need to look at how many apps you use on a daily basis to judge your space requirements. Now, it's your data that you need to be concerned about.

When I built my new dual boot system last year, I left 100 gig for XP and Vista. A year later, my XP partition has 43 gig free, and my Vista partition has 67 gig free. All of my data is stored on a NAS. I recently switched from using XP most of the time to using Vista.

It does not really matter where you install the app. It's more important as to where you store the data. If your beta OS takes a dump, you can always reinstall the app. It can be much harder to restore your data.

Don

 

[da233]

It's always possible to increase or decrease the size of the partition even after I install the OS onto it, right?

Also, does anyone know of a good guide that explains how to make backups (and how to restore them) for computers that have their OS in a seperate partition?

And any recommendations for backup/image making programs?

 

[JRS]

As far as I know, it is not always possible to resize a partion with an installed OS, at least not without some third party tools.

Vista (and I'm sure Win7 too) has the ability to extend and shrink partitions, but it is very limited. The first time I tried to shrink a Vista partition that had gobs of free space, Vista would only allow me to free about 1/4 of that free space. Earlier versions of Windows have no partion resizing that I know of. It is very easy to extend a partion in Vista, but I've only done it with single boot machines or when the next partion did not a have an installed OS.

If you had a Vista/Win7 dual boot on a 80gb hard drive and each had 40gb, it would probably be straightforward to free up space from the 1st partion and then extend the 2nd into that space, but I don't know how well the reverse would go.

I typically install business and development apps in the same partion as the OS and install games in a separate. I am a backup fiend, but don't like to backup game install files, so I usually put them in a non-OS partition and backup only the game save files.

I use Acronis True Image Home for backups and Acronis Disk Director for managing my partition sizes/locations. The only issues I've run into is that when dealing with multi-boot hard drives, it is possible a restore to one OS partition may mess up the boot manager, but that is a straightforward fix. I've also learned with Disk Director to only mess around with one boot partiton (when it comes to resizing) at a time.

I'm dual booting Vista Home Premium and Business on my work laptop (mostly because it came with Home already installed and wanted to leave that intact). Using the Acronis tools, when I got the PC, I shrunk the installed OS partition with Home Premium done to 60gb, created a 2nd of 50gb for Business, and left the rest (~200gb). About a week later, I got a 7200rpm drive to replace the 5400rpm that the laptop came with, and again using Acronis, cloned the entire hard drive to the new one and was booting with it in short order.

I agree with Joe's earlier remarks about caution with Beta OS's but I may try to triple boot this laptop with Win7 - but I do daily incrementals and I've restored from them already, so I know I can recover in short order if I have to.

I would highly recommend anyone that is going to experiment with Win7 on hardware that they cannot afford to not have available to have a working backup/restore solution that they know (have tested) will work.