Installing a new HD in a laptop

[Muse]

I just bought a refurbished laptop with 100GB HD. I just swapped out the HD for a new unformatted 640GB HD and booted the machine with the OS installation disk I'm going to use, Windows 7 64 bit Ultimate. I created a partition of 50GB, then another 50GB partition and I have 498GB unallocated space. I figure to create one more 50GB partition in case I want 3 OS's running, two Windows 7 and possibly a Linux distro at some point. What's confusing me is I see a 100MB System partition. In the past I recall my boot partition being the system partition, or am I dreaming or wrong?

I haven't formatted anything yet, I'm just creating partitions. What's left over I'm going to relegate to data.

Is 50GB enough space for the OS and applications? Should I install applications in the data partition instead? Or should I have an application partition too?

Do I need to click Extend? When I did that I got a scary screen saying if I created an extended partition I wouldn't be able to undo it! 😕

Here's what I see:

Disk 0 Partition 1: System Reserved 100MB 86MB free Type: System
Disk 0 Partition 2 48.7GB 48.6GB free Type: Primary
Disk 0 Partition 3 48.8GB 48.8GB free Type: Primary
Disk 0 Unallocated Space 498.5GB 498.5GB free

 

[lxskllr]

The 100mb partition is for Win7 boot. I don't like having a bunch of partitions like that. It always ends up being a PITA. If you're dead set on it, I wouldn't make them any smaller than 100gb for an O/S I intended on using, and I'd put my programs on the same partition as the O/S. Why 2 Win7s? If one is just for testing or something, you could make that smaller than 100gb.

 

[Muse]

The 100mb partition is for Win7 boot. I don't like having a bunch of partitions like that. It always ends up being a PITA. If you're dead set on it, I wouldn't make them any smaller than 100gb for an O/S I intended on using, and I'd put my programs on the same partition as the O/S. Why 2 Win7s? If one is just for testing or something, you could make that smaller than 100gb.

I'm not really set on it at all. My desktops always have more than one boot partition and many times it's helped me. Generally I just use one but often it helps me troubleshoot an issue or if it's my HTPC, I will have an alternate boot that works while the usual one is screwed up for some reason. I don't expect to use this laptop as an HTPC or anything, so maybe I should just have one OS partition to which I install apps and have a separate data partition.

I pulled the plug on the machine, so I'll have to start over again tomorrow (bushed tonight), but maybe I'll have 150GB for OS/Apps and the rest for data or something like that. Is that too much for OS/Apps? Seems like a lot.

So Windows 7 always creates a separate System partition separate from the boot partition? I don't remember this from XP, Windows 2000 or even Vista. The machine I'm "building" is to replace a Vista machine. I thought those other OSs just put the system files in the C: root, and the rest of the first install of the OS in the C: partition. But Windows 7 seems intent on installing itself in the 2nd partition. What drive letters is it going to create? Is it going to install itself on D?

 

[lxskllr]

You have to answer that yourself. You know your exact usage patterns. 150gb sounds fine to me. I'd rather have too much room than not enough. The way I use a computer, I keep all the default Windows directories for temporary storage, then move things I want to keep to a data drive. That way I can work with files I want to keep for a little while, but not pollute my permanent data with a lot of cruft. I have several gb on data that isn't necessarily "keeper" material, but is too good to toss right now. I like having enough room on my O/S drive to be able to do that. Once I decide to permanently keep it, it'll be moved to my data drive.

 

[RebateMonger]

The 100 MB System Reserved partition isn't necessary for a Win7 install. It's there to allow you to repair your system without a Win7 Install DVD or Repair Disk present. Doing a Win7 install without it is documented in many places.

 

[Muse]

You have to answer that yourself. You know your exact usage patterns. 150gb sounds fine to me. I'd rather have too much room than not enough. The way I use a computer, I keep all the default Windows directories for temporary storage, then move things I want to keep to a data drive. That way I can work with files I want to keep for a little while, but not pollute my permanent data with a lot of cruft. I have several gb on data that isn't necessarily "keeper" material, but is too good to toss right now. I like having enough room on my O/S drive to be able to do that. Once I decide to permanently keep it, it'll be moved to my data drive.

I'm trying to imagine this and not doing well. I suppose maybe you're talking about all the stuff that wants to go under your account in Documents and Settings. I've always looked askance at that and usually try to prevent anything I care to keep from going in there in the first place. I direct applications (for the most part) to my data partition (on a different drive, on my desktops), already subdivided for my apps and utilities, my being the only person using my machines. Sometimes for temporary storage I just have things (downloads) dropped to the desktop. Usually downloads go straight to my data partition in a special directory, which has subdirectories. I have a folder called "Data" and that makes it easy to identify everything I want to keep, basically everything under it. The downloads directory (\DL, with its subdirectories) is right under \Data. There's a thing or two that I use that don't seem capable of keeping their data outside Documents and Settings, and I live with that, know what to do to back them up.

I don't sweat a computer dieing or OS flipping out because the data that matters to me is backed up. I don't yet do this systematically (thinking about setting up a WHS data server configured for regular and automatic backups), but I never seem to get burned when things get hairy. I was lucky when my main machine died around 6 weeks ago, and got the data off it before it became toast, but even if I hadn't my recent backups were reasonably up to date. Actually, I think the HD is OK, and I'm going to move it to another machine shortly and figure its data partition is sitting there just fine. I'll nuke the OS partition for use by the next machine.

 

[Muse]

The 100 MB System Reserved partition isn't necessary for a Win7 install. It's there to allow you to repair your system without a Win7 Install DVD or Repair Disk present. Doing a Win7 install without it is documented in many places.

Well, what are the issues? From my position, I'm not sweating repair because I do have a Windows 7 install disk. Maybe I should dispense with the System Reserved partition. Guess I'll hunt up some info with Google.

Edit: Here's what appears to be one of the more coherent sites explaining how to prevent the System Reserved partition from being created when installing Windows 7 (Business, Ultimate or Enterprise) on a new hard drive:

http://www.shivaranjan.com/2009/05/11/how-to-prevent-windows-7-from-creating-a-hidden-recovery-system-reserved-partition-during-installation/

 

[RebateMonger]

Well, what are the issues? From my position, I'm not sweating repair because I do have a Windows 7 install disk.

Nothing big. If you were doing an Upgrade or Clean Install from a "used" disk, Win7 wouldn't build the System Reserved partition. That's why you don't see it on some PCs. I think it's kinda' a nuisance, since it makes a full system recovery more difficult when using Volume imaging (one more Volume to recreate and restore).

 

[Muse]

Nothing big.

I'm going to dispense with it. The site I linked a couple of posts ago is very clear and straight forward and includes great screen shots. It's a piece of cake. I'm going to have 150GB OS and the rest for data. I figure to have a data server pretty soon with plenty of space, so the data should be backed up OK. Local is for speed's sake. Well, I'll see how it all turns out!

 

[lxskllr]

One nice thing about using the default data directories, is it's easy to backup. Just copy your user directory, and you get browser/email, and other settings backed up with your word docs, music whatever... There's reasonable arguments either way, but it's worth considering.

 

[Muse]

😕 Well, I created the partitions according to the scheme in the link. I had two options (the site didn't tell me what to do). I could click Format or Next, and I did the latter, maybe a mistake. I got a message that Windows had all the info it needed and was ready to install. I proceeded and it's installing but I don't know which partition it's going in! The site said Windows could install on the System Reserved partition because there's adequate space on it (in my case 150GB), but that doesn't mean it will install on it unless asked. I figured I'd be asked to format but I wasn't. Several reboots will probably happen before Windows comes up and I go in there to find out if it's on C or D. Hopefully, if it's on D, I can somehow go in there and start over without resorting to installing the disk on another computer as a secondary drive and formatting the 2nd partition. I don't have the hardware on hand, but I suppose I could maybe jury rig it.

 

[Muse]

Sonofabitch! It installed on the larger partition, gonna have to delete the whole thing and start over. Damn....

 

[lxskllr]

Now's a good time to use 1 big partition ;^)

 

[Muse]

Now's a good time to use 1 big partition ;^)

Nah, I managed to install on one smaller partition, 150gb. The rest is unallocated. No way it's installing on that. I figure I can allocate and format once Windows is setup...