New HD, need a little help
helicon1984
Sovici, Bosna i Hercegovina
Hi. I just ordered a new, 640GB Western Digital Caviar Black HD and I was wondering what's the best way to partition this drive? I know its a matter of personal preference of how many partitions I'll need but I thought you could offer some advice. I'm doing a clean install of Win7 RC (64bit), so I guess I have to format the drive before that and then later partition it. I've used the GParted LiveCD for dual booting XP and Win7 but if you know of a better program please let me know. That's it really.
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Comments
If you're a good user and don't install everything to C:, you'll have plenty of room, and most -- if not all -- of your apps will survive any future reformat.
Makes sense. Wouldn't the 25GB partition, like you suggested above be small for Win7 and any programs I install later? Isn't it required that new programs go into Program Files (or AppData on Win7, is it?) on the system partition?
Also, after clicking on 'custom install' when installing Win7 I should first click on 'new' on 'drive options', then choose the size of my partitions and after that's done format both partitions. Right? Or am I missing something?
Backup in a nutshell
1. On this install of Windows 7, install ALL of your programs to the second partition if you can
2. Save the installers!
3. Once it comes time to reformat, go to C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME
4. Copy APPDATA and MY DOCUMENTS to the secondary partition
5. Reformat C:
6. Install drivers
7. Test the applications on your second partition and reinstall any apps that don't work
8. Copy the APPDATA and MY DOCUMENTS folders that you saved from your old Windows install back into C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME
9. Reboot.
The whole reformat process with this method takes no more than 45 minutes.
Partitioning
Yes, use the custom install/advanced button in Windows 7. Create a 25GB partition, and a second one containing the remaining space. Install Windows to the 25GB partition.
SPECIAL TIP!
If you don't use your PC's hibernate functionality, you can type powercfg -h off at an administrator-level CMD.EXE prompt to free up space on C: equal to the size of your system's main memory.
(fix) alright, seems that my question is answered a few posts above, but I was always under the understanding when you installed a new os you had to reformate the HD and you lost everything? is this not correct?)
You can recover most program settings by first backing them up (as in the picture above) and then moving them back to their original location (as in the picture above).
SOME programs store registry settings or files in folders that are not obvious. Photoshop and Office are great examples of this. You cannot save these apps through a reformat and they must be reinstalled.
It's important to realize that the registry is gone. Any settings it contained gets nuked, so if you have apps that NEEDED settings in the registry (many don't), they're toast too.
You cannot upgrade from any current edition of Windows 7, so you will need to repeat the backup -> reformat -> restore procedure for the retail release.