Windows 7 and Fedora 12

Hello all you Good People,

I have a brand new gaming PC - Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P, AMD Phenom II X4 965, Kingston HyperX 4G DDR3 1600MHz, MSI R5850 Radeon, Corsair TX 650W ps, with a Western Digital Black 500GB SATA 3.0Gb/s HD and I am going to install Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit and Fedora 12 for the first time. After several days of researching the web I have decided I need to post to possibly get my questions answered. So forgive me if all this has been addressed elsewhere.

Windows Data:

After installing W7 and installing some programs I noticed several things that I want to change. First of all I like to have 3 partitions for a windows environment - 1 for the OS 50 gig, 1 for programs/applications I install and uninstall on a regular basis for testing/debugging/etc. purposes 100gig, and one for Data 100gig (all the partition sizes can be changed).
I want to keep the OS separate and minimal size for expansion, defragging, performance, and potential reinstall purposes. After a fresh install of just W7 (no updates or anything) it was approx.15gigs. But after installing some updates and then some programs on D:\Program Files I noticed a horrible growth in my C: partition of like 3 gigs. All I installed on D:\Program Files was an antivirus, an antispyware, ATI Catalyst drivers for my Ati Radeon 5850, Adobe Acrobat Reader and some other utilities for monitoring the hardware. When I went back and looked at C: I noticed for example that the ATI software was in the
C:\Program Files,
C:\Program Files(86x),
C:\Program Data,
C:\Users\<name>\etc. and also where I told it to install on D:\Program Files. So it was installing data all over the place as did the other programs (although none installed anything in the 64 bit Programs Files area except for ATI). Now I expected information to go into my C:\users\<name> area but not into the other 3 places on C: So I started to investigate this and found several post that allow me to "move" or "Junction" the C:\Program Files, Program Files(86x), Program Data, and Users but I also found warnings about windows updates not working if you did this (HOWTO: Move Program Files and User Data to another drive, on Windows 7 Yarrrb!) just to name one site. I also found information on changing registry settings and "unattended installations" etc.

W7 likes to put 2 Primary partitions - 1 for the WinRE and 1 for the Boot/OS. This leaves 2 primary partitions available to use for other Oses.

My plan for partitions would be the following (all sizes are approximations):
Windows:
WinRE - 100mb (unless removed) - Primary Partition
C: W7 64 bit OS 50gig - Primary Partition (unless I cant adequately separate the program/user data from the OS then it would be one large drive…ugh!)
Extended Partition of 200gig with 2 Logical Partitions:
D: 100gig for Programs/Apps
E: 100gig for Data

Fedora:
250gig left over for Fedora (not that Fedora and the apps/data needs this much space)
/Boot - 400meg - Primary Partition
Extended Partition/LVM of 249gig with 3 to 5 more or less Logical Partitions:
/ - 20gig or whatever?
/swap - 2gig ?
/home - 100gig Data?
/usr - 100gig Programs/Apps installed or do my programs get installed in /home? Is this a bad idea to separate from / ?
/var - 6gig
/tmp - 10gig maybe?
leftover for ? or use somewhere.
I know its "tradition" to use a partition for the swap but I have been reading that you can just make it a "file swap" swap and that that performs as well or better then a separate partition?

As for the actually installation of the Oses I plan to install W7 first then Fedora 12.

Questions:
1. I cant confirm that if I were to move/junction/unattended install/etc. C:\Program Files, Program Files(86x), Program Data, and Users that Windows updates would indeed not work? (If for example they had to update something in IE or WMPlayer I read somewhere that some of Microsofts Apps have hard coded destination information like C:\Program files).
2. What would be the "best" method to relocate those folders if indeed that would not cause problems?
3. Do I really need to have a separate 32 bit program file folder(86x)? I read that the .exe determines where to look for stuff anyways so I should be able to put all apps in one folder like D:\Program Files?
4. I can get rid of the 100mb WinRe but I am not really sure of the possible long term consequences of doing that if any?
5. Does my partition scheme look OK for windows? For Fedora? For dual booting?
6. I need to be pointed in the right direction for Fedora partitioning (see above question marks). But I would like a similar setup as windows keeping all things OS separate from all things Programs and Data unless that is already being done with /boot, / and /home?

NOTE: I don’t care if the OSes or the programs need to be re-installed. I do want my Data separate for ease of use and backup.

Thx for any and all input
Cory

I'll start by saying that a gaming PC should only be used for games, not for everything. That will solve most compatibility issues. As for Fedora, I'd buy a separate drive for it or virtualize it. As for the partitions, once you intially 7, you can crave up partitions with Disk Management, and then start shifting folders. Finally, use the PC only for games - I find this helps with everything from stability to performance. Oh, Adobe Reader is junk. Install PDF Xchange Viewer and choose which version you want x86 or x86-64 (64-bit).