extending seagate 160 gig hhd, new installation

Hello, new with windows 7 and messing around with partioning. I've done a bit of searching here and not finding anything directly, nor quickly. This is a newly built 64 bit machine, with W7 Home Prem. Ok, so I'm using an older seagate sata 160 gig hdd, that had xp on it from old system. There was 1 partition on this HDD. What I have done already, in the W7 install, is format this drive. It now says Disk 0 Partition 1 149.o GB total size and 184.4 GB free space. I want to partition this down to about 50 GB (or whatever is suggested to me) just for W7 OS. The delete option is "greyed" out. The only option that is available here is "extend" and it states I can only extend a min. of 152618 MB. So, is this correct that I need to "extend" this current partition, to do what I want? If so, what number am I looking for here? I'm just trying to move along. Thx for the help. DM

Boot the Win7 installer, use Custom>Drive Options to delete all partitions, create new ones of the size you want, format each, then install to first partition.

The installer will create a 100mb System Reserved boot partition which conveniently places the Repair console (normally only on DVD/Repair CD) on F8 Advanced Boot options list.

All of the steps are illustrated here: Clean Install Windows 7

Bare Foot Kid said:

You need to do a complete wipe secure erase to the entire Hard Disk Drive to over-write all the old XP code and start the clean install from there, have a look at these tutorials linked below and be sure to post back with any further questions you may have and to keep us informed.

SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Reinstallation

Additional Secure Erase / Wipe Information

ok, so method #2. I'll have a look at this soon. gotta feed the youngins. thx for the info. to the poster above...the "delete" feature is greyed out.

ok, i'm gonna look at this in the morning. my head hurts and not sure the hurdles i'll need to jump through to "wipe" this hard drive clean. i'll post back once I get it cleaned off. how much space do you recommend i partition, megabyte wise, so i know when I get to it? i'm not gonna load this pc down with a ton of apps. or anything. thx dm

What do you mean Delete is "greyed out?" I suggested you follow the forums' procedure for clean install which is explained in this tutorial: Clean Install Windows 7. It illustrates how you boot the Win7 installer, then use Custom install>Drive Options to delete, create and format partitions as desired.

The benefit of keeping the OS partition compact is to keep the image compact with just the OS and programs, so that if/when WIn7 becomes irreparable or problematic you can reimage it's partition while the separate data partition is kept intact and current.
Backup Complete Computer - Create an Image Backup
System Image Recovery

To achieve this you would link your named User Account or select User folders to another partition by this method: User Profile - Change Default Location
User Folders - Change Default Location