Getting Ready for RC

[XGUNTHERC]

Hey guys, I am trying to get ready for the RC to be officially released so I can start running Windows 7.

I never installed Build 7000 back when it was up for download. and recently I was just told to wait till the RC comes out. and get that.

I currently am just checking HD space, and trying to decide what I will do. I've been looking at getting another HD recently. Either a second 500GB 32mb cache 7200.11 for Raid0, or I think I might just get a WD 1TB Black Edition. I don't know.

Anyways. My current 500GB HD has 145GB Free of 465GB. I was watching z3r010 "How to Dual Boot Windows 7 BETA & Vista" Video. and I was trying to make a partition like in his video. and it wont let me. Basically I go to My Computer, click Manage, then select disk management. When I click and choose Shrink, It only gives me 508MB of space to shrink... How is that? Not even 1GB and I have 145gb free?

Why would it do that? I've actually never partitioned a HD. (Sad I know). lol so I'm not sure what to do from here.

How big of a Hard Drive should I have, or partition should I make, to run Windows 7? I think I might just get another 500GB and throw Windows 7 on that. and then I can just use either HD and either operating system. Then set up Raid0 later.

What does everyone think here?

Thanks!

 

[MasterEvilAce]

Personally, I have 5 hard drives right now.
I would never go back to having just one hard drive.
I keep a C drive for windows and any applications that I need to install.
My other hard drives are storage drives which i have organized.

I highly would advise getting the second HD, and not running any sort of raid. Just keep your documents and important files on your second drive. That way you can format the drive with your OS / Applications and won't have to worry about your documents ever again

Also, I'm not entirely sure, but one reason windows won't let you resize your partition .. there could be files near the end of that partition, and maybe windows doesn't automatically move files to keep the partitions separate.

 

[zay]

Download this tool, and create a new partition for when you want to install Windows7. Free download EASEUS Data Recovery software, Partition Recovery Software, Partition Manager and Data Backup Software.
Personally I recommend just getting another drive and add it as a slave. I have used it before, and it worked great. Even when these things work great, I still have this uneasy feeling that down the road, something fishy might happen, but, that is just me.

 

[swarfega]

Personally, I have 5 hard drives right now.
I would never go back to having just one hard drive.
I keep a C drive for windows and any applications that I need to install.
My other hard drives are storage drives which i have organized.

I highly would advise getting the second HD, and not running any sort of raid. Just keep your documents and important files on your second drive. That way you can format the drive with your OS / Applications and won't have to worry about your documents ever again

Also, I'm not entirely sure, but one reason windows won't let you resize your partition .. there could be files near the end of that partition, and maybe windows doesn't automatically move files to keep the partitions separate.

My philosophy is the same. I also have 5 HDs and prefer actual HDs to partitions. I would also recommend getting a second HD to put win7 on it. Having more than one OS on the same HD is never a comfortable feeling. Either one could go down leaving the HD in a mess.

 

[jfar]

Hi XGUNTHERC, I would definitly get another HD,you will be a lot happier and a lot better off in my opinion.

 

[wguimb]

Windows 7 needs a good 7 to 9 GB. On the subject of external or network attached drives (NAS), I had the Lacie Bigdisk 1 TB and had put all my important photos, home movies and various documents on it. Well, it crashed one day. OMG I was totally in grieving mode for months. I lost everything! Fortunately I had most of it on CD's an DVD's. I was determined to not have that happen again. So, I purchased an Iomega StorCenter I TB NAS and formatted it to RAID 1 mirroring (duplicate writes of data to the two internal 500GB drives providing only 500GB of actual storage). I copied all my stuff on to it and now I have a much better chance of being able to recover if a drive breaks.

 

[MilesAhead]

@XGUNTHERC I have a "Raid Ready" AMD Sata HD in my machine. I had a similar experience where it didn't want to let me shrink the C: partition in any meaningful way. I tried defragging with jkDefrag with Optimize. Same thing. Anyway, because of the fake RAID my Paragon Drive Backup Rescue CD wasn't recognizing the HD. I got Macrium Reflect full trial version and did a test backup and restore on C:. Not only did it work, but when I restored the MBR from the backup(which option it gives you at the end of the restore settings) after booting into Vista64 Disk Management told me I could shrink C: by 300 GB instead of 13. It must have fixed the partition table.

When you boot the install DVD and do the repair "fixmbr" it deliberately does not overwrite the partition table info in the MBR in case you don't have the default partition setup. So that fix won't fix your partition table. You could try the Macrium and see if it works for you. Make sure you test booting the Rescue CD before you do anything though. If you don't have RAID you're probably ok but I never assume anything anymore with the hardware changing so fast these days.

edit: oh yeah, another advantage is that the trial is fully functional for 30 days. If you have a chance to put W7 on and you don't like it, or it doesn't have the drivers you need, use the Macrium to just lay your image back on the way it was. IOW, make a backup before you do the partitioning.

 

[Jacee]

I highly would advise getting the second HD, and not running any sort of raid.

I go along with this ... I had way too many problems with this set up and Vista Ultimate.

 

[nate42nd]

It would be great to have another HD. If you want to try the partitioning again.....you might try defragnemting first. Also, the Easeus partitioning tool IS great. You should try that if you want to do it with one HD. I have personally had zero problems dual-booting Windows 7 on two separate systems, I used the Easeus on one and the Vista disk management tool on the other. Good luck.

 

[DocBrown]

You can never have too many extra Hard Drives!

 

[XGUNTHERC]

Well I have a 20GB drive somewhere in the other room. and a 4GB. but that wont help.

There is an 80GB drive in and old machine I have but I think it died. I'm not sure..

Yea, I think I'll just get a second HD.. So why no Raid.. because the performance gain is not worth the risk??

Maybe I should just get a Velociraptor and install windows 7 to that.

Ya I think I'll just get a second HD.. but now I need to decide if I get another Seagate 500GB 32mb drive, or if I change to a 1TB drive.

 

[XGUNTHERC]

I think I might just either get this.

WD Caviar Black 1TB
Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drives

or Samsung F1 1TB
Newegg.com - SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drives

Or just get the same as I already have but bigger, a seagate 7200.11 1TB. it is the cheapest.
Newegg.com - Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31000333AS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drives

How does the seagate 1TB compare to the WD 1TB.. Same performance I'm assuming. Also Seagate has fixed there Firmware problem by now right?

 

[Night]

nop

 

[MasterEvilAce]

I think I might just either get this.

WD Caviar Black 1TB
Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drives

or Samsung F1 1TB
Newegg.com - SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drives

Or just get the same as I already have but bigger, a seagate 7200.11 1TB. it is the cheapest.
Newegg.com - Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31000333AS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drives

How does the seagate 1TB compare to the WD 1TB.. Same performance I'm assuming. Also Seagate has fixed there Firmware problem by now right?

Personally, I have (2) 250gb Seagate drives. The performance isn't all that great (I think I could only get 50 MB/s write speeds out of them), and I just narrowly avoided that huge firmware fiasco. They haven't been a problem, but to be honest, I am kind of afraid to buy Seagate these days. Look at the reviews.. they're practically split at 5 stars and 1 stars

I have two of those 1TB western digitals. Writing to the drives (copying data) I was getting 80-90 MB/s write speeds. I fully trust WD with my data. My C drive is a 640GB western digital.

I've never owned a samsung drive, so I can't comment

 

[Barman58]

Just out of interest, to get the Windows Disk management to work you have to remove the page file and the system restore information from the drive as these are, as was said already, placed at the end of the drive.

Personally I don't feel this is a good thing to do when messing with partitions so I use my 3rd party solutions

 

[XGUNTHERC]

That is great info Barman... I'm not about to mess with windows Sysstem restore. I'd like that to stay there. I was simply just following z3r's guide. I guess that isn't the best way to go about it then. That is probably just the easiest.

Yea, I will NOT be doing a partition. I'll be getting another HD and running that with Windows 7.

So, Say I get another HD. and I install Windows 7 on it. and all is good. How do I switch between windows 7 and Vista, when each are on a different HD. Still Dual booting? is that the same thing, or different?

Thanks for the input guys.. I'll have to decide on what drive to use.

 

[MilesAhead]

I would still find out why it's telling you that it can't be shrunk. If you turn off swap, defrag with an optimizing defragger, and temporarily disable system restore, and it still won't let you shrink it, there's something wrong. You don't actually have to shrink the partition to test the available shrink space. Esp. if you do an image save with Macrium Reflect then you should be safe. Something seems fishy to me dude. I wouldn't just go along hoping nothing bad happens.

 

[XGUNTHERC]

damn.. this is a pretty solid deal. I'm thinking I might buy this. Use it as my primary main drive. and use my current 500GB for the Windows 7 boot Drive.

FRYS.com | Seagate

What ya think, that is a solid deal.

 

[DocBrown]

damn.. this is a pretty solid deal. I'm thinking I might buy this. Use it as my primary main drive. and use my current 500GB for the Windows 7 boot Drive.

FRYS.com*|*Seagate

What ya think, that is a solid deal.

Go for it!!!!!
I have bought sooo...... much stuff from Frys stores & Frys.com I should have a frequent buyer express card.

 

[Sam]

I have the 500gb Seagate 32mb Cache, it's fast around 80mb/s read. But with all my other seagate drives, they have been poorly constructed. I've had three of there drive tshe first one start making a ckicking noise,the second hard drives PATA pin smashed into the drive(was able to fix myself), and my third's hard drive (500gb 32mb cache) SATA port's plastic broke off.

Held together with dental wax!