Do I need to partition HD before W7 Install?

Craigus

Craigus

Craigus

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As above. Total new build with fresh Hard Drive and Windows 7.

Do I need to partition my HD when I first install windows from the optical drive? Will windows sort this out for me? I don't want to end up with partitions that I can't manage easily.
 
You can tell win7 to install on a drive with no partitions at all, and it will create them.

Win7 will try to make a 100mb boot partition, then use all of the remaining space to create a single partition which becomes your C: drive.

Incidentally, what do you mean by managing partitions? Once you create them, there really isn't anything to do apart from fill them up :) But if you want to let the win7 installer make the partitions for you, that's certainly an option.

I won't explain the usefulness of partitions because it sounds like you aren't too comfortable with them.
 
Thanks for the reply. If windows 7 will do it for me that is fine, I'll probably let it.

I dont mean managing them as such, just setting up I suppose during install. Do you mean useful in terms of backups?
 
Backing up from one partition to another isn't much of a backup if those partitions are on the same physical drive, if it dies you lose both backups.

Use separate physical disks if you don't have RAID or some external backup.

Windows 7 will partition the disk for you, it'll grab all but 100mb or so of the drive for itself (you can alter it) the 100mb is for magical-fairy-staff which Windows 7 does.
 
depends ....

If you leave windows to do it , it will create a hidden boot partition (usefull if something goes wrong with main OS partition)

OR

If you create the partition first you will have all your eggs in one basket
 
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