Member of the Month

KilaTsunami
October, 2024

Online

Welcome to the Newschoolers forums! You may read the forums as a guest, however you must be a registered member to post. Register to become a member today!

Windows 7 Clean Install on Separate Partition

profile picture
[Sensible]
Posts: 113 - Karma: 10
Hello everybody, I seem to be in a predicament. This is really only for more advanced users that are more comfortable messing with installations and have experience using Win7 on a seperate partition as where data is stored.

Here's my issue:

I currently have two partitions on one internal hard drive. One partition is a recovery sector pre-installed by HP that works with recovery disks I have. Using those recovery disks will award me with a semi-fresh Win7 OS, the not so fresh part is that HP installed all their shitty software on the iso disks and there's no way to edit the disks to remove that info as they're bootable .iso disks. I have a legitimate Win7 disk with no cluster-fuck software so I'm not worried about that. The thing I am worried about is that I want to have Win7 on one partition while storing my data on another partition to maintain as much organization as possible. However, I already have my C: drive with Win7 installed on it (that is the second partition mentioned above). I am afraid if I create a third partition, boot from my Win7 disk, then install it on that partition, I won't be able to boot into either partition because Windows may become confused and not know how to handle two separate Windows OS'.

I think a sensible solution would be to just install Win7 on my C: drive, then when it's all installed, just shrink it into another partition, then it would be as easy as selecting to save all my data to the other partition.

My question is will my solution work or are there other steps I'll need to take.

P.S. Backing up my current data is not an issue.
Jul 16 2011 11:39PM
0 0
profile picture
InFlamesWeTrust
Posts: 163 - Karma: 16
You can in fact install Windows 7 on both partitions, however it would probably be easier to do a fresh install on your c: drive and as you said create a separate partition for your data. With Win7 on both partitions, you will have a boot menu that lists "Windows 7" twice and will have to edit the listing with bcdedit to differentiate between them. This is easy enough to do but two installations is stupid in my opinion. With the fresh install all you will have to do is make folders on your new d: drive for example and point your music, pictures, and videos libraries to those folders etc. A lot less work and by the sounds of it more what you're looking to do
Jul 17 2011 12:44AM
0 0
profile picture
iLLbiLLy
Posts: 2865 - Karma: 2,631
I'm kinda confused at what you want to achieve...

As far as your computer being 'confused' by two seperate OS that shouldn't be a issue. You'll be given a option on which to start on boot up.

If you have a valid windows CD and lisence then all you need to do is....

1. Back up all your current data to a external medium.
2. Boot to your windows cd (change settings in BIOS)
3. Format your disk and partition it into appropriate sizes
4. Install Win7

I don't really recommend doing it this way as you might never know how much space your primary drive is going to need(programs, etc). Its a much better idea to buy another disk if you want to keep your primary drive free of data.
Jul 17 2011 12:45AM
0 0
profile picture
[Sensible]
Posts: 113 - Karma: 10
Yeah the first poster sort of re-assured my solution so I'm going to do that, you sort of got the question as well just not how I wanted it.

Either way 10/10 for both of you, thanks a bunch.
Jul 17 2011 12:55AM
0 0
All times are Eastern (-5)