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

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MerleOne:
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)
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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.
-allen (October 20, 2011, 08:27 AM)
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Volumes (C:,D:, ...) yes, Raid 0 disks no, AFAIK.  :(

MerleOne:
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.
-Eóin (October 20, 2011, 08:21 AM)
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There is always (free) tools to resize partitions afterwards (Easeus, MT Solutions, etc.), this is what I do when needed, once every 2 years or so.

Carol Haynes:
OS Boot partition
Windows Partition (250Gb should be enough)
Data Partition (most of the rest of the disk)
Backup Partition (if you just backup Windows and Office eg. you shouldn't need more than 40-50Gb).

My plan would be install Windows 7 on blank disk, set the size of the windows partition within the advanced options and make the rest of the partitions once Windows is installed.

Once you have windows installed, activated and fully up to date (and any other essential programs) look at teh amount of drive C you are using and make the backup partiition 60-70% of that size.

Once Windows is installed create a Data partition (you can expand/shrink the size later to allow backup partition space - but it is easier to expand than shrink with windows tools because they aren't intelligent - they don't move data around).

Click start and then you user name and select all your profile folders - right click and drag them to the data drive - that way all data will be automatically stored on the data disk (except for the stuff that get hidden in AppData).

Before doing the backup run ccleaner and delete all restore points to reduce the image size, then use Windows Backup to create a system image on the backup partition.

FWIW I don't think it worth bothering with the extra expense, hassles and potential pitfalls of RAID.

If you have money to build a RAID system buy an SSD instead and put windows on that to get more bang for the buck.

JavaJones:
I've never understood why people go crazy with disk partitions. Some people seem to use them like one would use folders. There's no good reason I can think of to have a "movies" partition, a "music" partition, etc. 2 partitions, as 40hz said, boot and data, or at most 3, with boot, data, recovery/images. Of course keeping recovery/images on the same physical drive limits its applicability in the case of disaster. *Some* system problems can be recoverable that way (i.e. something that doesn't involve physical issues with the whole drive), but it's really better to keep sys images and recovery partitions on a separate drive IMO.

- Oshyan

Eóin:
There is always (free) tools to resize partitions afterwards (Easeus, MT Solutions, etc.), this is what I do when needed, once every 2 years or so.
-MerleOne (October 20, 2011, 09:16 AM)
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That's true, I love the dedicated live Linux distro GParted myself. But still I find the process of resizing partitions with data on them to be scary, maybe it's not risky at all though.

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