Question on How to Manage 2 Partitions

[yaco78]

Hi everyone, I just installed W7 on a new drive which I called W: which I created by partitioning 35gb off of my original C: drive. However, now that I want to use W7 as my primary OS, I'm not sure how I should be handling my files. For example, all of my music. This is all located in a folder called 'Music' on my Vista Desktop, so to get to it I have to go to c:/users/eric/desktop/music to access my music. And then what I did is create a shortcut to that music folder on my W7 desktop so that I would not have to copy the 40gb+ of data across both disks. Is this how I should be accessing files from my original C: drive? The problem with this is that nothing on my C: drive comes up when I do a system search from W7, so if I search for 'music' or any song within the folder, nothing gets brought up. Is there a way to change where the search feature looks for files/folders? And lastly, when I do reinstall my software, do I want to be reinstalling it over the original files on the C: drive? Like when I reinstalled my anti-virus software, it defaulted to W:/Users/Program Files x64 or whatever, and so I changed it back to its original path in the C: drive and overwrote all the original files. What effect will this have? My reasoning for that is that I'm not going to have enough disk space to be having 2 copies of all of my stuff on it. I'm very new to this whole concept so any recommendations would be nice before I do any more work trying to set up my files again!

 

[Barman58]

You could try adding the file location on your Vista disk to the Music library that should solve the issue with indexing.

Personally I always used a separate data partition which any of my OS's can access ( I have at times had four OS's on the one machine) this also makes things easier for access permissions and means you can re-install/or remove one OS without affecting the other(s)

 

[yaco78]

Thanks, adding the music to the library made it come up on the search. But what about the rest of my files? Surely there's a way to make it scan any drive I want?

 

[Barman58]

It's unfortunately a standard thing for each windows OS to have it's own program files folder with the resultant duplication.

It is possible in theory to share a programs files folder between two OS's but is quite involved and fought with potential problems.

What you could do to cut down on the duplication is, where you can specify a custom install location, point the installer to the original OS location this will over write the initial location but as long as the versiona are identical should not cause isuues

As for the other files you can type indexing into the start search bar and select indexing options - this will allow you to add any folders that you have not included in the libraries

Of course if you wish you can create new libraries to have all your files available in one place - the whole reason for the libraries

 

[yaco78]

Ah, ok. I can afford to fit all of my software on each drive separately so long as I can share all of my media files. I will play around with the libraries thing, although I did add the entire C: drive to the indexing list and it did nothing. If for some reason my W: drive does become full or nearly full after adding all of the necessary files to it, is there a way to partition extra space onto it? I wish I allocated a lot more space now!

EDIT:
Sorry, I think I actually interpreted part of your post wrong. You said

It is possible in theory to share a programs files folder between two OS's but is quite involved and fought with potential problems.

and then

What you could do to cut down on the duplication is, where you can specify a custom install location, point the installer to the original OS location this will over write the initial location but as long as the versiona are identical should not cause isuues

In that case, I SHOULD be overwriting my programs on the C drive? This is what I would like to do. But you said it's involved and can cause problems? The main programs I'm working with are Office, a bunch of Adobe programs mainly Photoshop, a bunch of small programs like Daemon Tools and video converters and all those little utilities, umm a few games like Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, nothing major. My iTunes, AIM, and I guess I got screwed out of being able to use Windows Movie Maker, because I'm not buying it again, so scratch that. But overall you think it would be okay to overwrite all of these things on my original C: drive and have my programs for W7 essentially be running off of there? I did a backup of the C: drive before installing W7 so if something goes wrong I should be able to replace it, so I'm willing to take a risk if I need to because I'd rather have W7 running smoothly than Vista. Well let me know what you think! Thank you very much

 

[Barman58]

First with the indexing you will have to give the system time to add the content to the index
As the system is set-up to only index when your system is idle it may take a little while to complete if you are using the system.
It's a good idea to leave the system running for a few hours unused to enable the index to complete, especially if you add a lot of files at one time.

It's possible to extend the size of a partition using the built in disk manager in windows although this is a limited application and often 3 rd part solutions are more efficient.
If you get to this stage a quick search of the forums will provide a lot of partitioning options, many of them totally free for personal use

 

[Barman58]

Getting back to the issue of programs - If you have an option to install the particular software at a location of your choosing then this should be safe.

what may cause problems is "moving" the windows 7 system pointers to point to the vista locations which would enable even those programs that do not give a custom install option to run from an alternate location.

I believe both the office and the photoshop installers have custom options so they would hopefully migrate ok.

 

[yaco78]

Oh yes, all of the major programs, that I have at least, ask where you want to install. The little things will fit fine on the new drive. I wouldn't even know how to manually change the pointers, I only switched the path when it defaulted to W:/Program Files with a browse button next to it so I navigated over to C:/Program Files. I guess there is one other program that I'm concerned about.. the pre-installed webcam software for the built-in webcam. I'm not going to able to install that again, am I? I'm assuming not, but will the camera still work for Skype? I can live without that software if the camera can still be used

 

[Barman58]

Built in peripherals can be a problem but if you have a Vista driver for the Webcam this should work on 7 that assumes of course that Win7 doesn't ship with a suitable driver. the only way to be sure is to see what happens with skype. if it runs then great if nt the best thing is to visit the system manufactures website to see what they have on offer - very few devices that work with Vista will not work with Win7

 

[yaco78]

Hey, I just wanted to say that I began using the libraries and these are AWESOME! I used to be so cluttered with stuff on my desktop. Now it's all organized and stays tucked nicely in the taskbar. What a great OS. I've never felt so organized! Even with most of my files over on the C: drive, with the libraries I can't even tell. And my software installations have all been successful so far with the exception of antivirus which I replaced. Cheers to W7 I've never felt so excited about an OS before. I feel energized Thanks for all the help getting set up- I'm pretty much done setting up my files and programs again, and no bugs yet!

 

[yaco78]

Hmm, maybe not all programs need to be reinstalled. I just double clicked on the Movie Maker .exe from the C: drive and it opened right up in W7! I was able to import and publish a video no problem! I was also able to open Skype up the same way, and now I'm testing others =)