Dual boot Strategy: Will this work?

[GullyFoyle]

I have a C drive of approximately 130GB. About 18 GB is currently used by XP SP3.
I'l like to set up a dual boot with XP and Win 7, where XP has a very small portion of the C drive (since it's requirements will only shrink), and most of the space is given to Win 7.

I ran many defrags to try to get all the data on the C drive mashed up at the front of the drive so that I could shrink it maximally, but out keeps leaving files out in the middle of the drive, plus there is a MFT out there too! So I don't think I will be able to shrink and allocate as much space as I wish for Win 7 by merely following the instructions I have seen using GParted to do this.

I have downloaded Acronis True Image 2010 and Disk Director trials. I have backed up my C drive to my 1.5TB data drive using True Image.

Can I do this?

Use Disk Director to partition the C Drive to 110 GB at the root (where it's reportedly faster), then 20 GB for XP, then restore XP to the the 20 GB partition using True Image, then install Win 7 in the first partition?

More info:

I have Win 7 Pro from the ACM deal
I want to install the 64 Bit version
Drives:
HD 0 (current): partition 1: 130GB NTFS (win XP), Partition 2: 330 GB NTFS (data)
HD 0 (desired): partition 1: 110GB NTFS (Win 7), Partition 2: 20 GB NTFS (Win XP), partition 3: 330 GB NTFS (data)

HD 1: 1.5 TB NTFS (data)

Thanks for any help or advice you can offer.

 

[VinylxScratches]

Sounds like it might work but...

Why not just run Windows XP in a VM? Dual booting seems really archaic these days.

 

[GullyFoyle]

I don't know anything about running a VM. Also, all my stuff is already installed and configured under XP.

 

[Billb2]

That's way too much messing around for the minimal gains (if any!) you may get.

Divide the big partition in half and install Win7 of the empty half. Win7 will automatically set up dual booting.

Just watch for fragmentation in the future and you'll be fine.

If you want to mess around with file placement the your HDD, get Ultimate defrag.

Or just wait until the SSD drive get to reasonable prices.

 

[GullyFoyle]

As a follow-up, I used GPartEd to shrink my XP partition. It was able to shrink it to the size I wanted, with no issues.
It even had the option to shrink the space from the left or right of the partition, but since all my data was at the "left" (I believe the outer rings of the disk), it would have taken far longer to move everything, and seemed riskier in my mind.

On the other hand, I installed the "try it" version of Acronis Disk Director, and it let me get to the point of hitting "apply" to make the partition changes, before it told me "this is just a demo". And when I uninstalled it, my machine went into a reboot loop, until I told XP to load the "last known good configuration". Heh, it won't work for you, but it will still f-up your system when you go to reinstall it.