Fighting Irish Forums

I notice that win7 has a feature in control panel called "Create and format hard disk partitions". Has anyone here used this? I am thinking about creating a partition for everything but the OS to be moved to, and leaving the OS in it's original partition. Would I be able to do this using this tool?
I have had to reinstall the OS twice in the last two weeks using the HP restore tool, and losing everything else in the process. I have no windows install disk- HP provides the install in their rescue/restore utility, but no disk.
If the OS was in it's own partition maybe I wouldn't have to lose everything else if this happens again.

The partitioning tool in W7 isn't bad, and is still in its infancy, but putting W7 into its own partition is always a good idea.

I use MiniTool Partition Wizard, as it's a bit easier to use. You can DL it free here:
http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-par ... nager.html
Updates also free.

Once you get things fully sorted don't forget to create a Repair Disk. This is located in your Start Menu under All Programs>Maintenance folder.

hmm if you are going down the partitioning route you should consider
1: At least 20GBS for your OS.
2: A seperate partition for your pagefile 2-3 times the most memory you ever intend to have
3: A partition for your programs/games

Once that is done I would uninstall all my applications and reinstall putting them on my data partition
I would also move my windows page file to my page partition.

Don't blame me if it all goes wrong!

While some folks create lots of partitions, the only real advantage I get from partitioning is to create two: one for your personal files and one for everything else. This way, when you eventually reformat you can leave your user files alone. Obviously your first partition (C:) must include the OS (and all your programs and games). Now some find it helpful to create a partition for games, for example, but you still need to reinstall them so I don't see the advantage.

Anyway, Murph this is an area where there are a lot of personal preferences.

TS!

Partitioning large HD drives does cut down time on defrags and other maintenance tasks.
Change your default installation path to something other than "C:" or reserve enough space for apps that don't give options to install elsewhere.

Ultimate backup is of course cloning your OS partition to a spare or external drive.