formatting question

Kaji823

sorry if this is the wrong boards... couldnt find the right one! anyways..

I have a 180 gig hard drive, partitioned with 127 on C:(Windows is on this drive), and 44.5 on D:. I have lots of files that Im going to back up, but Im just wandering if this is possible:

I was gong to back up everything on my C: drive and just format it through recovery console. Then, move all the files on D: (movies mainly) to the newly formatted drive, and then install windows on the D: drive(reformatting it in the process).

I also have the option of hooking the hard drive up as a slave to my 2nd computer. Please advise!

airoh69

If i understood corectly you want to make your d partition for windows xp and use the c partition for backup. Best way for me is to create another partition, put the stuff that you want to save, format the computer and then resize. This way you will be sure you will not loose anything. Or if you have the chance of putting the hd as a slave on your second computer, put it , format the partition with windows, transfer the file on that partition and then go for a fresh install.

kryyst

Though windows doesn't have to be on you C drive it really should be. It will most likely install fine but you could run into problems down the road with it existing on your D drive. It will also not be quite as fast if it's on the D partition instead of the C becasue the drive will be reading slower on the outer edges then on the middle of the drive. Especially the swap file, and windows loooves the swap file.

If you have a 2nd drive already - 2nd physical drive not just a 2nd partition. You'd be much farther ahead if you back everything off to it and then reformat your 180gig so you have a 40gig C partition and a 120+ D partition. If you don't I'd do this.

Backup everything to your 40gig partition. Then through recovery console format you 120(current c partion) into 2 partitions, say a 50 and a 70 roughtly. The 50gig then becoming your C partition.

Then reboot and install windows onto the 50gig partition. So now you have a C-partition 50gigs with windows, D-partition 70gigs with nothing, E-partition 40gigs with all your backed up files.

Now once you are backup and running in windows copy everything from your 40gig partition back to your 50gig partition. Then use device manager to remove the 70 and the 40gig partitions and remake it as just 1 big partion.

So in the end you'll have a 50gig C-partiton and a 120+gig D-partiton. THen all the files you backed up on C you can move back to your 120gig D.

Plus you can still take this drive out if you want and attach it as a slave drive on a 2nd machine and it won't screw anything up as the 2nd machine will still look to it's C drive to boot.