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Finally made it to Windows 7 -- looking for partitioning reccomendations

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brotman:
[Note: this thread has been inactive for over a year!  the (currently) last post describes the configuration that I ended up with! see « Reply #18 on: Today (2013-05-23)at 02:04:12 PM »  Regards, Chuck]

Hi,  I'm switching over from my long holdout xpsp3 to windows 7 home premium 64bit on a new machine with 1.5TB hard drive.  On XP, I've always added extra partitions for special purposes.  I.E. c=Windows, D= Data, M= music, P=Programs, etc.  Not too familiar with the nuances of Win7, I don't know what if any partitioning makes sense.  Any suggestions from your experiences??? My main purpose for partitioning was to make it possible to reinstall windows with a minimum loss of my data & programs.   Since I have no Win7 disc, only the "recovery/restore disks" windows7 allows you to make, I wonder what makes sense fore a backup recovery strategy along with whatever, if any, partitioning I might do.  Have y'all had good experiences with win7 backup and restore system??  Any helpfull advice appreciated


Thanks,
Chuck

40hz:
I wouldn't go too overboard with partitioning. Segregating the drive into one partition for the operating system and programs; and a second partition for user data should be sufficient for general use. Basically this divides the drive between what needs to be reloaded from CD and everything else that will get lost if it isn't backed up.

Beyond that I'd just organize into general folders (music, my documents, etc.) and optionally take advantage of the Libraries feature if I needed to take it beyond that.

FWIW I normally create 3 logical drives in a single disk system. Drive C is for the OS and Programs. Drive D is user data. And Drive E is for special backups (hardware drivers, e-mail, browser stuff, etc.) and for storing the current system recovery image(s).

There's been previous discussions at DoCo that got into this in much more detail. The main goal was to have the hard disk set up in such a way that it was easy to backup user data to an external drive; and to allow for easy recovery of your complete system via disk images (with all your current programs and settings intact) in the event the system drive got screwed up royally. This is what's often referred to as a "recoverable without reinstalling" strategy.

And like most things, it's easy to do.



But the devil is in the details. And it's best thought about in advance when you're setting up a 'clean' system.

Does this answer your question or do you need more specifics? :)

MerleOne:
I got a Win 7 Pc a few months ago already and here is how it was after unboxing it :
Disk 1 : 3 partitions
- Dell Utility
- Dell Recovery
- OS

Disk 2 : 1 partition
- Data

Disk 1 and 2 are actually 2 Raid 0 arrays (2 virtual drives spanned on 2 physical drives)

Dell, in it's great and inspired vision, allocated around 1900 GB to Disk 2, and less than 80 GB to Disk 1.  Now, OS is almost full and Disk 1 cannot be resized without wiping both Disk1 and 2.  Thanks a lot Dell !

But were is what is of possible interest to you.

I re-partitioned Disk 2 as follows :
- Data (~100 GB)
- Downloads (Mostly software installers) (1/3 of the rest)
- Video (1/3 of the rest)
- Backup (1/3 of the rest)

I use Downloads to store ... downloads mostly,
I use Video to store DVB-T recorded content and post-processed content using DVD mastering software,
I use Backup to image locally Disk 1 and also Data. I also backup to an external USB3 HDD, because if one of physical internal disks fails, I lose both Disk 1 and Disk 2.

Hope this helps.

Eóin:
I re-partitioned Disk 2 as follows :
- Data (~100 GB)
- Downloads (Mostly software installers) (1/3 of the rest)
- Video (1/3 of the rest)
- Backup (1/3 of the rest)
-MerleOne (October 20, 2011, 08:07 AM)
--- End quote ---

I did something like this once, but that I found one partition was getting full while others had loads of space. These days I just use one big partition per drive unless I need to split one for dual booting. It saves hassle in the long run if you don't guess the partition sizes appropriately at start.

allen:
Dell, in it's great and inspired vision, allocated around 1900 GB to Disk 2, and less than 80 GB to Disk 1.  Now, OS is almost full and Disk 1 cannot be resized without wiping both Disk1 and 2.  Thanks a lot Dell !
-MerleOne (October 20, 2011, 08:07 AM)
--- End quote ---

Unless I'm missing something key here, you shouldn't need to wipe either of them, there should be quite a few other options. Win 7 out of the box has a utility that can shrink and grow volumes non-destructively.

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