Old HDD, New HDD, and fresh install of Win7

[MPTech]

Got my new build put together and did a quick & dirty install of Win7 and a couple reboots. Everything works pretty well, now I want to reformat / re-partition them and set them up to my liking.

My config:
Phenom X4 9950 Black AM2+ 2.6ghz (quad, 64-bit)
Asus M3A78-CM Motherboard
OCZ DDR2 PC2 6400 RAM - 4gig
Saphire Radeon x800 Pro, PCI-E
Seagate 10k-rpm SATA HDD 120g
Seagate 7.2k-rpm SATA HDD 500g
LG 22X DVD-RW SATA
500w PSU

I wanted to partition the 10k HDD as:
30g C: for OS (win7 64-bit)
30g D: for Apps
remaining 60g E: Data

and the 500g drive for MP3's, videos, and backups (I have A LOT of music (>500gig, I backup to an external drive too).

I bought the 120g HDD used from my friend, so I want to clean it off and reformat/repartition it before doing the Win7 install (it still had my friend's OS still on it (now windows.old) and my new Win7) install.

Main question:
Can I run Seagate tools from a CD to cleanup the HDD before the fresh install? or is there a better way to set it up for the OS install?

I also saw a product called Active @ Kill Disk, can I run this from CD? (looks like they have a DOS version.) should I run this before or after the reformat / repartition? (I'm guessing before(?)
Kill Disk

any suggestions / feedback would be greatly appreciated. ( I am barely familiar with Win7 and have a lot to learn!)

[Steve R Jones]

I've never bothered with any special utilities. I nuke the partitions and recreate them during the installation.

KillDisk would be run before.

[MPTech]

When I installed Win7 as a test, it didn't ask me. (but there was only 1 partition on the HDD).

[Train]

Did you do a custom install?

http://tutorial.downloadatoz.com/how...tallation.html

[SuperSparks]

Yes, you need to choose Custom install, then click "Drive options", and you can set the size of the Windows partition. Any other partitions are set later in Disk Management.

I would definitely advise against a 30gig Win 7 partition. Nor would I bother with a separate partition for apps. Personally I would recommend 100 gigs as a minimum, you'll be amazed at how much disk space Win 7 and a few programs will eat up.

[MPTech]

I was wondering if my partition structure / strategy was still valid with Win7.

I used to create dedicated OS, App & Data partitions.
I cleaned-up, de-fragged, and backed up the OS partion monthly. Same, but less frequent on the App partition, and simply backed up the Data, but more frequently. I also removed indexing on all partitions.

Are these Dinosaur procedures now, with bigger HDDs, more memory, and much faster CPUs?

[Steve R Jones]

If your C partition dies so does D partition since C holds all the registry entries etc....

[MPTech]

I've never been worrid about the D Drive (apps) although I ocassionally took backups, but I always figured I could easily and quickly reload software. OS was another story and I didn't want to loose my Data (have it on external HDD and DVDs in my office @ work!)

So what's the latest and greatest partition strategy? Throw everything in C and do a massive backup?


slightly off-topic to my original post, but something I've wondered about before. I've got a rather old DOS version of Norton Ghost that I managed to burn to a bootable CD, that has served me very well for many years. On one of my non-critical PCs (a dedicated music jukebox) the main HDD died. I figured "no problem", buy a new HDD and re-image it. The new HDD was bigger than the original, but I wasn't able to re-image it with the backup. It wasn't a huge deal, so I just re-installed XP, but always wondered if this would be a problem on my main PCs too.
Any ideas?
(also, any better backup utilites? I just continued using my old Norton Ghost because IT WORKED and I didn't see a good reason to change or spend more money (although it was a bit of a pain booting to a CD to perform the backup. I might do it more often directly from Windows).

suggestions?


btw, I just want to say, YOU GUYS ARE GREAT!!!! I've been coming here for over 11 years and posted many many many questions, and ALWAYS got it resolved. (my last mis-fortune took over 6 months to resolve, (I wasn't in a hurry and would have thrown it out the window if I was!), but in the end it GOT RESOLVED!)
I've made some pretty bone-head mistakes, and nobody has EVER had a discouraging remark or belittling comment. I've been pretty frustrated on a couple occasions, but you good folks have always listened and lent a helpful hand. I've tried to play-it-forward by helping my friends, neighbors, and family whenever possible and used this forum MANY times to diagnose something that I didn't have a clue on. My friends, neighbors, and family think I'm some kind of PC Guru/God, but it's really the support of this forum that allows me to help them.

So, THANKS GUYS and GALS, I sincerely appreciate all of the help!

[SuperSparks]

Are these Dinosaur procedures now, with bigger HDDs, more memory, and much faster CPUs?

I came to the conclusion that they are dinosaur procedures. I used to do much the same thing as you, for the same reasons, but now that Win 7 has an excellent system imaging utility built in, it is easier to just put everything on a single volume and then take an image and save it to an external drive, it doesn't take long to do at all. My C: drive is currently at about 60GB used, and I can take an image in around 20 minutes, and restore in the same sort of time.

[MPTech]

Super, does it still make sense to partition in this fashion? (I guess I'll bump up my C drive to 50gig(?)


btw, you are one of the Guys I'm talking about! Thanks again!

[jdc2000]

On partitioning, I'd say it depends on how much data you have, and how often you want to restore an image. On a system used for testing new software, I would always store the data on a separate partition, with the OS and software on the boot partition. Also, if you have more than 160 GB of OS and data files, I'd move at least some of the data to a separate partition. You can keep the My Documents type files on C: but movies, software downloads, and anything else that doesn't need to be on C: should probably move. Also, rather than partition one drive, I usually use a separate boot drive and data drive. That way, I can save image backups on a separate drive.

[Train]

Boot drive, one partition, 120 -160 GB hdd. SSDs are right spendy though. 10,000 rpm maybe.
2nd hdd and more hdds, a couple GB drives for back up plus the GB external hdds sound reasonable and the route I am looking at doing.

[SuperSparks]

Definitely keep data on a separate partition - it makes life easier if things go horribly wrong and you have to reinstall Windows. Personally, I always install more than one drive, and keep my data on a different drive to the OS drive. Then by backing up my data to an external drive as well, I don't need to worry so much about HDD failure

[MPTech]

Got it all setup last night.
Ran the Custom install and reformatted the whole HDD, then re-partioned it in Win7. Kept things simple.
I discovered its only a 75gig drive (I confused it with another one I was working with), so I formatted 50g as OS/Apps and the remaining 20g as data (not the big files (MP3s, videos, etc)).
I formatted the 500g HDD as 200g data and the remaining as backup (for the first drive). I backup the large data partition to an external HDD.

Wow! Win7 is larger than I anticipated, 25g(?) initial install.
One other question, everything looks fine in Device Manager, do I need to look up the latest drivers for the mobo and video card, or does win7 load them automatically for me? ( I think it does, and I could find them on ASUS's site (I really had a hard & slow time navigating their website, yuch!)

[SuperSparks]

I don't usually bother updating motherboard drivers that Windows has installed automatically. It is worth updating graphic drivers though.