I want to install the new Windows 7 beta, but I’d rather not do it over my main OS. I have a lot of free space on my C: Drive that I don’t plan on using, though. Can I take some of that space and use it to make a new partition, or do I really have to format the whole thing?
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
Anybody? To clarify, I want to use the free space already allocated to one partition in another one without having to delete everything on the first partition.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
Yes, you can, with partition software. Got any?
What’s your original OS?
Vista. I don’t have any special partition software, though. What’s recommended (especially in the free category)?
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
Vista provides ability to repartition, including shrinking existing partitions. I haven’t tried it, so I don’t know how well it works:
http://www.tweakvista.com/Article38991.aspx
I’ve tried this once, to set up a dual boot with Ubuntu. It worked for me, but I’m not about to recommend it.
It does work and is easy to do, but if you are mucking around with partitions it’s essential that you back up important files before you do so. You never know what can happen, and a back up will save your ass.
I’ve got most of my stuff (documents, music, programs, etc.) on an external hard drive, so the worst that could happen is that I’d have to reinstall Windows, which would be the case anyway if it got messed up.
Speaking of that; I’ve thought for a while that it might be beneficial to format my hard drive anyway to get rid of the clutter, but since I do have most of my non-Windows programs on a separate hard drive, what’s the best way to go about this without putting back the exact same stuff I took off or leaving a bunch of duplicate files (like program files, etc., since they would have to be reinstalled since they wouldn’t be in the registry anymore) on the external drive, which wouldn’t be wiped?
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
Rather than setting up a partition, why don’t you put W7 in a Virtual Machine? The software’s freely available from Microsoft.
Depending if your running fat32 , which I dont know if vista does that , the partition that your creating for windows 7 beta, the installer tells you it wants NTFS.
Declan
One thing you do NOT want to do is ever let the Vista OS see a partition or external hard drive that the W7B OS has seen, or vice versa.
In other words, do NOT attach that external hard drive while W7B is installing or running … ever.
If you already have a programs or data partition on the internal hard drive which is used by Vista but is separate from the Vista OS partition, then you’re going to have to do some magic to prevent w7B from ever seeing it/them.
The programs you have installed on Vista won’t work under W7B because the registry entries, etc., would not be present in W7B.
And even exposing a data-only partition cross-OS is dangerous since each OS has different user SIDs, machine SIDs, etc. You can easily get to a place where the other OS beleives it doesn’t have security rights to something vital. And having W7B lock Vista out of your family tree archives (or whatever) would not be a good outcome.
Those SID-related problems are recoverable, sort of, in that you can always force ownership & destroy all the existing ACLs on the partition. But that’s doing a lot of collateral damage. For a home machine with one user, the functional impact of that collateral damage may be small enough to tolerate even though the logical impact from a proper systems management POV is huge.
ETA: As others just said, a VM is a MUCH better & safer idea.
hmmm … I have an external eSata drive; had XP Pro installed both on my internal (C: ) and external (I: ) and could choose which to boot from.
Installed the Windows 7 beta from a USB flash drive to the external drive … installed sound card drivers, Firefox, and some other programs using the setup files on the C: drive … had to download new motherboard drivers that Win7 couldn’t find … everything seems to be working fine so far.
I have looked around both drives while having booted from either one and like I said, actually installed programs from the original C: drive into Win7 on the I: drive. The old XP on I: is now in a folder named Windows.old.
So is my system going to go poof someday because of my makeshift dual boot setup?
Windows 7 is a new Beta released operating system, so you should treat it as if it can destroy any hard drive data you have on the computer.
Yes, understood that beta testing can be risky. I rambled some in my post trying to be specific about what I had done.
My question is really regarding the advice to not let either OS “see” the other drive … something I have never heard of and have been doing.
BTW, both the drives have only one partition; I didn’t mess with creating new ones.
Hard drives are cheap. Go to the local computer junk store and they’ll almost give you an old 7200 rpm 40 GIG IDE drive. Then there is no chance of messin up stuff that is not even connected…
YMMV
You should be able to obviate a lot of these issues by virtualisation. The host HDD appears like a network drive to the virtualised OS. You need a large HDD, though.
But it’s really best if you can dedicate an entire machine to it.
Agreed, dedicate a machine to it. I’ve got it installed on my desktop (P4 3.0ghz, 3 gig ram, 150gig HDD). It is running wonderfully and I am LOVING the fact that it doesn’t suck like Vista. Only problems so far are a few installers choking. Great OS so far though. Enjoy it.