Drive Partition Planning For Win7 Installation
Sep 15, 2009
Having obtained my new 80GB Intel X-25M SSD I will of course be using it as the Windows Partition in my new installation after I receive my release copy on 22nd October.
However, I was wondering on the best way to partition the remainder of my storage to maximise performance, and particularly where I place the swap file, applications and data.
The Maxtor was the original HD that came with the PC and is approaching 4 years old. I obviously don't want to use it for anything that affects performance so the obvious usage is as a backup volume. However, I'm not sure of the wisdom of this given it is the oldest drive!
So, my current plan is as follows:Boot & Windows Partition, including application installation: All 74.5GB of the available SSD Swap File: A seperate 10GB partition of the WD drive Data: The remainder of the WD Drive (Can you get Windows 7 to move the location of the User Folders such as 'Documents', 'Downloads' etc. to a partition other than the system drive? If so how?) Backup: The Maxtor Drive Even though I am getting a full version of Win 7 by virtue of the UK Pre-Order offer, I won't be maintaining my Vista install so no need for a partition for that (good riddance!).
It is important that the swap file is not on the SSD I understand to reduce the number of write cycles and maintain its lifespan.
Does this sound like a good plan to maximise performance? Certainly using the seperate swap file seems to work very well in my RC test installation.
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Nov 25, 2009
I installed Win 7 on a partition on the same drive as XP.
1 - XP was on C: Win 7 installed to F:
2 - I have removed XP from C:.
3 - Repaired Win 7. Win 7 boots fine.
Now I want to move Win 7 to the beginning of the drive but unsure how - as Acronis doesn't allow me to clone to the same drive - even though its another partition.
Is there any way round this?
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Jan 2, 2010
I am using Windows 7 Home Premium N and XP Home on a dual-boot system but I want to move my Windows 7 partition from one drive to another but am not sure how to do it. Currently XP is on partition C: and Windows 7 on partition O: and essentially, what I want to do is to move partition O: to my main drive where space is already available for this to be done.
I have seven drives on my system amounting to 6.5Tb (2Tb on external drives) and currently Windows 7 is on a partition on one of the internal 1Tb drives. However, I would like to free up the space being used and place Windows 7 in a separate 50Gb partition at the end of my main drive (500Gb). Since I pre-partitioned the current Windows 7 partition before installation, I do not have the 'hidden' partition I've read so much about.
I have an old DOS version of Ghost on a boot CD and can readily back up the current Windows 7 partition ready for recovering to the prepared partition on my main drive. Once transferred I then want to delete the current Windows 7 partition. However, I know there is more to it than this! I am quite happy to reletter the partition to drive O: since I have software installed on the Windows 7 partition which is referred to in the registry.
All this I'm fairly confident about doing - but it is operations involving the boot manager that I am completely unsure of. How does the system know where the boot info is located? What points it to the right partition/drive? Does it refer to the drive and/or partition? Is there anything else I just may have overlooked? Finally, should I perhaps just leave it where it is until I'm ready to do a reinstall on the appropriate partition?
A lot of questions I'm afraid but I would appreciate some help as I'm fairly new to the question of dual-boot systems and boot management.
PS I have been looking for info on this in all sorts of places but have not so far found the answers to my questions. Sorry for any inconvenience if the info I'm looking for is already on this, or another, site. It's just that I've not found the info so far and any help being pointed in the right direction would be appreciated.
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Jan 6, 2013
Okay so i clicked custom install and it shows all my drivers. I did a partition on my C drive before doing the installation and when i try to install windows 8 and i want to choose the empty partition unallocated it's not on the screen options?
It only shows C, my Recover, System G, and HP Tools F How do i make my unallocated show in my windows 8 installation so that i can choose it
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Feb 8, 2012
I am installing windows on a new computer, and was watching the series of videos newegg has on the matter. I got to the third episode - [URL] and noticed that at about 12:30 into the video, he mentions creating a maximum size partition on the drive before installing windows. What purpose does this serve? Does it merely allocate the full size of the drive strictly to windows, so nothing else can use it?
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Apr 19, 2011
My present computer can take 8 GB of RAM and I would like to take advantage of that with Win 7 64-bit. Presently I'm running XP 32-bit with 4GB of RAM.I did some research and found that some of my hardware (particularly my scanner that I need often) won't work under 64-bit - or it will after some "fiddling".My computer hardware does not qualify for virtualization, so running Win 7 in XP mode is not an option.Therefore I would like to create a dual boot with XP 32-bit and Win 64-bit. That would give me time to get Win 7 64-bit running smoothly with all hardware that I need while at the same time I can do all my tasks under XP.Presently Win XP is on my C: drive; for Win 64-bit I'd use my internal D:drive (SATA - 250 GB).
Question 1: It is my understanding that each OS would have its own drivers. Correct?
Question 2: I am aware that Win XP 32-bit can use only 4 GB of RAM. What happens if I install 8 GB RAM - will XP 32-bit crash or anything? Or will it just ignore the additional 4 GB RAM?
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Oct 22, 2009
I have started the installation process of windows 7 on a clean 1 TB hard drive. In order to ensure expediency of the read time of my primary drive, I choose the custom installation. When I did I partioned the drive as 250GB & 700GB. Hoever it also created a 100MB system partition on its own. It never did this in Vista. Is it suppose to do that?
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Oct 2, 2012
So, time to take a couple steps back and slow things down a bit here... I'm currently in the planning stages of a low-budget media centre / network storage setup and I'm hoping to glean some knowledge from some of you more experienced overclockers before I go wasting money on things I don't need.The reason I decided to post here and not in the general or media sub-forums is because of how I want to go about this. Part of my plan involves taking a decent spec system and underclock the **** out of it.... Or, at least just underclock it enough for a fanless setup. Firstly, the media centre itself is a low-cost project... So the obvious OS choice here is Linux. But, which one...? It doesn't need to have any fancy GUI or "user friendly" features. At boot, the OS itself will go straight into whichever media centre software I settle on (XBMC, MythBuntu, etc. etc.), with other services starting up silently in the background (nginx / Apache, MySQL, Samba, Webmin, etc. etc.).Everybody in my household are avid Android users (yay), so the box will most likely be controlled directly from our phones or tablets. I mean, seriously, can you name one true computer geek that wouldn't grin from ear to ear while they tell their friends how their TV remote is actually a 7" multitouch, dual-core, Android tablet...?
What sort of hardware would I need for this setup? Here's the first idea that comes to mind:1.4 to 1.8GHz dual core 1 to 2GB DDR2-PC6400 40 to 80GB OS drive Multiple 1 or 2TB 'green' drives Low profile GPU (s-video for now, HDMI can come later) Either completely fanless, or mostly fanless with a single 200mm fan at low speed for good airflow I may possibly build my own case from the ground up.I'm hoping to get this all running from the start with nothing larger than a 300w to 350w PSU if possible, perhaps even one of those funny L-shaped midget PSUs from an old Dell desktop? I'm sure many of you here are old enough to know which ones I'm talking about.. Heck, those things came with nothing more than a 40mm or 50mm fan if I remember correctly.What hardware would you guys use for a system like this? Fire away, I like constructive criticism.
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Sep 6, 2009
i read all the topics from here but i am unable to resize my win 7 partition .
i think the problem is that the free space is in the extended partition . how to get the free space from the extended partition without erase or format the other partition (D and E)
http://i31.tinypic.com/2cr3dx1.jpg
I try a lot of programs but no one works becouse the free space is inside the extended partition
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Dec 24, 2009
I have windows 7 RC, windows vista, and linux mint running in a triple boot config. I don't really want to keep linux and was planning on installing the Retail version of Windows 7 once i buy it. However, while im booted in windows, i cannot see linux at all. I can only see the Windows 7 partition (C: ) and vista partition (D: ) under Computer.
But i can see it in Disk Management
The last two partitions are for linux.
So my question is, when i decide to install windows 7, will the windows 7 install disc see those linux partitions so i can delete them while installing Windows 7? You know the utility in the Windows 7 install disc that allows u to delete, format etc. partitions.
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Mar 15, 2009
I have an older computer that is or was being used for Win XP Pro. I put a new hard drive that is partitioned with 25gb on the C drive with two other partitions of different sizes. I set the the hard drive as cable select (later tried as Master only)
Windows 7 in cable select saw all the partitions. When set to Master it only saw Partition 1 and the rest as unallocated which seems weird.
I have the boot order in Bios set as Floppy, CD Rom and then Hard Drive.
I have an external usb DVD reader for the install disc.
When i start the pc, then press to boot from CD, it sees the install disk and the install process starts. I get to the point to select where to install and I get this Notice:
"Windows can NOT be installed on to Disk 0 Partition 1"
I hit the more info button and get this notice:
"The computer hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk's controller is enabled in the BIOS Menu."
It should boot to the hard drive the way I have it setup. At least it does for Win XP.
I was wondering if anyone has any suggestion as to how to get around this issue.
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Aug 1, 2009
I installed win 7 RTM build 7600, the install process finished without any problems.
but after first reboot, the OS doesn't work, i see the main screen , but when i click on some icon, or press start etc. the system freeze for 10 min (aprox...)
after that the operation preformed, and the when i click on anothrer icon (do another operation) it freeze again.
any idea, what can it be ?
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Dec 28, 2011
I have my HP Laptop which came with Windows Vista as the OS. I want to upgrade to Windows 7 so I bought Windows 7 from my local store.I entered the disc and did boot from CD. It reached to the page where it shows the disk partition. I deleted the partitions and created new one. However, whenever I create the partition, it creates a primary one and gives me error saying Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition.
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Nov 11, 2009
I have no idea what that partition is for, but why are people up in arms about it. Who cares?
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May 13, 2009
I am running Windows 7 all great and haven't had any problems, I want to make Windows 7 my sole operating system and remove my XP partition. I managed to install Windows 7 on a separate partition with no problems but just wondering if it's all fine to go ahead and delete my XP partition and then resize my Windows 7 partition back up, this wouldn't create any problems?
Just a matter of backing up all the essentials first, just in case?
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Oct 27, 2009
I'm currently running Windows XP (SP3)and am trying to run the Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade. Each time the installation gets to the point of starting to erase the XP program files and load the Win 7 files and stops with a statement that it doesn't recognize the C partition where XP is installed. The PC has a single SATA HD with only a single partition. Is there some step that's left of the installation instructions that I could be missing?
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Sep 21, 2009
Is it possible to install Windows 7 on a GPT disk?
I created a RAID 0 array on my dual Xeon 5580 system and tried installing Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit RTM. When I got to the "Where do you want to install Windows" part I used shift-F10 to open up a command window, then I used diskpart to create a GPT with the following partitions:
Disk 0 Part 1 - 102 MB EFI System
Disk 0 Part 2 - 128 MB MSR
Disk 0 Part 3 - 500 MB Primary
Disk 0 Part 4 - 7446 GB Primary
But there was a message "Windows cannot be installed to Disk 0 Partition 3 (show details)" - clicking on "show details" gave me "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk is of the GPT partition style."
What gives? I thought Windows Vista and beyond supported GPT.
The problem with MBR is that you can't have a file system larger than 2 TB.
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Sep 25, 2009
So heres my problem: I installed Win 7 on a drive a while back and earlier today I decided that I needed more hard drive space. I saw that I had 100gb of unallocated space on the drive, but it was behind my Windows 7 partition, making it impossible to resize that partition. So I defragged with Perfect Disk 10 which moves all the files to the back of the partition, cleaned up, disabled all the usual things, ran defragger again, and then booted into a live cd of GParted. I then proceeded to move my Windows 7 partition behind the unallocated space so I could extend the volume.
Unfortunately, something went wrong and now I get the error message "Disk boot failure, please instert system disk and hit enter." So I followed the directions and ran startup repair, tried manually creating the bootmgr, and ran all the tests, but it still doesn't work. Luckily for me, I was able to reinstall Windows 7 on the unallocated space so I can at least get to the files on my other drive, which I discovered are all perfectly fine. I'm hoping this will be a quick fix since it seems like all the files are ok. What should I do so that I can boot back into that partition?
Long story short, I tried moving the partition, and something went wrong, and now I can't boot into that drive. I installed another copy of Win 7 on another partition and all the files are ok. What do I need to do to the original partition to get it to boot again?
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Nov 25, 2009
I am having a problem that seems more like a Win XP problem, but since its part of my migration to Windows 7 and many people these days may be trying the same.
As I said, I am in the progress of migrating to Windows 7. As a transient solution until I have transferred and re-installed everything under Windows 7 I want to have a dual boot capability, i.e. I bought me a larger HD, created two partitions on it, installed Windows 7 on the first partition, and then I used a disk-imager (Acronis Disk Director) to copy my entire old XP disk 1:1 to the second partition of the new HD. I then set things up so I can choose between the two partitions using the Windows 7 boot manager. After some fiddling the choosing and booting in principle works fine.
BUT, when I try to start WinXP, I have the very strange effect, that the system at first boots and starts WinXP up fine up to the point where it presents the login screen. When I then enter my name and password my credentials at first seem to be accepted, i.e. I get a "Loading your settings..." dialog but to my dismay only seconds later that dialog always turns into "Logging off..." (???!@#@$&!) at which point the system hangs for some long period. If I wait long enough (~5 minutes) it eventually returns to the login screen again. I also tried to login as Administator but that failed as well (the error message mumbled something about no domain server to verify my id which is complete nonsense, since my XP system was never part of any domain, so there is no server in the world that could verify anything here!).
Any idea what could cause this and why can't I not log into that copied/moved 1:1 Window XP installation? Any hints/suggestions/pointers would be highly welcome!
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Dec 8, 2009
I have a small query about this whole partitioning business. I'm trying to set up a partition so I can dual-boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu.
My computer came with a Dell Recovery partition and an OEM partition as well as the main C: drive, which are all primaries. I've created a new logical drive, which I've called Z:, with the idea being to install the Linux OS in that chunk of the drive.
My first question: First up, I've formatted it as "exFAT" - is this the same as FAT32?
Next question: can I divide this 'Z' into smaller chunks with different formats, or do they all have to be the same format? I was hoping to be able to format a small bit of the drive into a Linux file-system so that both OSs can be kept entirely separate from each other, but leave the bulk of it as FAT so that I can see my files with both OSs. If this is not possible, what would be the best way to achieve the desired result?
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Jan 22, 2010
Would anything happen to my other partition when i format win XP to win 7 in C: drive/partition?
Okay it goes like this, I have Win XP SP3 installed with two partitions, C: and E: (<----supposed to be D: ). I intend to install Win 7 Ultimate on my computer from XP SP3 and install it in C: where the current OS is at. My question is, will my E: partition prevail still? Will the reformatting touch E:?
The reason is because there is where i want to put my backups and later migrate it.
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Dec 1, 2009
I'm trying to install Windows 7 Professional on a system with the 2nd hard drive partition - 100GB in size. I used Paragon Partition Manger to create the two partitions, formatting both as NTFS.
Windows XP isproperly installed on the first partition. When I try to install Windows 7 Pro on the second partition it extracts the files & installs fine right up to the point of rebooting, then gives me this error on rebooting:
File: windowssystem32winload.exe
Status: 0xc000000d
The selected entry could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt.
I've purchased four Win 7 Pro license keys from MS and already sucessfully loaded Windows 7 Pro on three computers with a single partition HDD, using the DVD (downloaded from digitalrivers) w/o any problems - so one would think the DVD itself is OK.
Any ideas why I can install Windows 7 Pro (using the same DVD) just fine on a single (simple) partition but get this error when trying to install on a seperate partition?
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Aug 19, 2009
I'm using Win 7 Professional x64 rtm from MSDNAA.
When i try to create a clean install, everything goes smooth untill the Partition selection screen. I get a "no drives were detected" notice and the list is empty. It offers the Load drivers option but i dont really know where to get them.
I have Striker Extreme motherboard, and a wdc wd5000aaks SCSI hard drive (connected via SATA).
Im running Vista Ultimate x64 at the moment. If i use vista's install dvd to see if it finds hdd drive during installation, it does find them. Also if i try to use Windows 7 installer from within Vista, win 7 installer finds my hdd normally.
What should i do?
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Jun 10, 2009
im trying to dual boot windows 7 beside my already installed vista HP , when i try shrink my c partition with the inbuilt vista partition tool , to create room for the windows 7 partition , it will only allow me to shrink roughly 2000 MB of the drive even though there is 45% of a 250 GB drive still available .
they reccomend at least 16GB of free space to install it,
where am i going wrong , im a little confused ,
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May 9, 2011
I created a 20gb partition on my external hard drive and no longer require the partition. It is currently unallocated space so I want to format it into NFTS. Using computer management the partition was selected and and I went through the steps to format but i keep on getting an error message saying there is not enough space on the disk to complete this operation.
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Mar 30, 2011
i recently installed windows 7.. it had only 2 drives c: and d: .. i need to partition d: drive into 3 partitions. is it possible?
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May 23, 2012
I am helping a friend out with his new HP that he just bought. It comes with a 1TB hard drive and windows 7 home 64 bit. Since it is an HP and the OS and various HP programs are loaded on it already, is there a way to partition the HDD now so that my friend can keep part of the drive isolated for programs and the OS and use the rest for files?
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Jun 30, 2012
Is it possible to install windows XP, Vista, or Seven on an extended partition? I have a partitioned up hard drive for my main boot OS (linux fedora 17) and i am trying to find a solution so i can play video games and every solution ive tried from Virtual Machines to Wine just dont work for me and i want to install a version of windows to play my video games and the only space i have free is at the end of one of my drives as an extended partition.
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Oct 3, 2012
I have partitioned my main hdd into 2, one is for system install only and the other has programs / game installations. I want to put a fresh install on my system partition but wonder how difficult it will be to use the programs from the other partition, eg. Will i have any registry problems if i try to run the programs straight away? Some of these programs are hefty in size...
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Feb 11, 2012
i have a new lap tab with windows 7 home premium 64-bit here i have a problem for installation pro e so i want have xp as a partition with out loosing windows 7 home premium.
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Nov 3, 2009
My boot menu originally consists of Vista (C:) and recovery partition (D:). To install Windows 7, I shrank C and made a separate partition (W:)
Now I have 3 partitions: Vista (C:), New Simple Volume (W:), Recovery (D:).
I installed Windows 7 to the (W:), and it reboots a few times during installation. My situation goes as follows:
Initial installation---Reboot (1 of 3)---bypasses the boot menu and continues installation---Reboot (2 of 3)---boot menu shows up and I can choose to continue the installation of Windows 7, or go to Vista. When I choose Windows 7, it finishes installation---Reboot (3 of 3)---No boot menu is shown. Computer boots into recovery partition.
Why is this happening? Repairing Windows 7 or Vista using recovery partition doesn't help either. It basically just forms a loop by booting to the recovery every time.
Interestingly, the only way I can start Vista again is by reinstalling Windows 7 and wait until the boot menu screen show up after the reboot (2 of 3).
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