Thanks for the reply, very useful. I have received mixed advice (certain people claim more than 1 partition is not possible).
Huh? You can create two or more partitions on any type of drive, depending on your needs. For most situations at least two partitions are what I'd call "normal", with a C-partition sized appropriately for Windows and installed programs and a reasonable extra allocation for things that end up there... like some user data you casually did not place elsewhere when you saved it. Depending on your situation, somewhere between 50GB and 100Gb should be "reasonable" for Win7, in my experience.
The rest of the drive should be allocated to a "data" partition (or two or three or...), but at least one. With an SSD from Samsung they recommend leaving about 10% of the drive unallocated to any partition, for use in "over-provisioning" which improves SSD performance. You use Samsung Magician to set that up, when optimizing Win7 for SSD performance.
As has been mentioned by others, the advantage of having a separate essentially Windows-only partition is the ease with which you can restore it from a "system image" backup (taken automatically at regular scheduled intervals ideally, such as weekly, using Macrium Reflect) in the event of a real disaster that you have no other recovery alternative for. And if your "data" is on a separate partition, again it makes it just easier and more organized to keep track of things, back it up regularly (say monthly for a FULL "data" backup and nightly for "INCREMENTAL" data backups), while keeping it separate from Windows with the obvious flexibility that implies.
This multi-partition idea also makes it easier to do a clean from-scratch Win7 reinstall or upgrade to Win8, if you had to or wanted to.
I replaced the 500GB spinner in my Lenovo W530 laptop with a 512GB Samsung 840 Pro, leaving about 49GB for "over-provisioning" and allocating multiple "data" partitions (to mimic my desktop machine organization and partition drive-lettering, which have 3-4 hard drives partitioned into a similar organization as my laptop looks with its single 512GB SSD, just with smaller individual partitions on the laptop). You can do whatever you want, per your own style and tastes.
I have used PartitionWizard a while ago (thanks for the great recommendation) and I might use it in this case to merge both partitions into 1. Would this be possible whilst the drive is running Windows? That would make it a lot easier.
Most PW functions not involving changes to C can be done by the installed program while running under Windows. As a general rule, anything involving a change to C can be done either all-at-once using the standalone boot CD version, or can be at least set up while running under Windows but requesting a re-boot once you push APPLY. That triggers a re-boot, and PW kicks in before the Windows desktop starts... in order to complete the scheduled operations. Once everything is done (again, this is before Windows desktop is brought up as part of this PW-triggered re-boot) PW will return to the normal Windows boot process, and you'll eventually end at your desktop as normal. And all previously scheduled partition changes will now have been completed.
He has a HDD (currently using with Windows 7), an SSD (waiting for delivery) and a third external hard drive with backups and system images of the current OS. He has also ordered an enclosure for the current hard drive (and to connect OS for cloning prep) Knowing this, what steps would you recommend. I really think merging (if possible) is the best option as he has very little data altogether.
To each his own. But my own style when helping friends and family install new machines is to always use PW to divide the generally 500GB or larger delivered hard drive into a C and D partition, for Windows and data. C is generally no larger than 90GB (which is still VERY generous) and D gets whatever is left.
I also insist that they get an external USB 3.0 drive to be used for regular "system image" and "data" backups, and I set up Macrium Reflect for a regular weekly scheduled "system image" taken in the middle of the night between Saturday and Sunday. Although Macrium Reflect Standard also includes folder/file "data backup" capability, my own preference is to use Novastor's NovaBACKUP for "data backups", just because I've been using it for many years and prefer its GUI interface. Note that NovaBACKUP also includes its own "system image" backup capability but I prefer Macrium Reflect for that function. So I myself use two different programs, where either one really could suffice if I weren't so influenced by GUI usability.
