Gonna reinstall Win 7 when SP1 is out...

jimbobaggies · 24 Jan 2011 at 19:41

Currently have the following set-up;

Main Hard Drive
Partition 1 - Windows 7 Pro
Partition 2 - Games

2nd Hard Drive
Partition 1 - Pagefile
Partition 2 - Temp storage (stuff I can lose and don't care about)

My OS has been installed now for 15 months, and is somewhat bloated and clunky at start-up. So I want to do a reinstall with Win 7 and SP1 slipstreamed into the disc, and make sure I back-up game configs, any registry I need, also outlook 2010 / windows live emails, and anything else anyone can think of?

Games as follows;

Steam - all HL, CS stuff, CoD:BO, TF2
BF:BC2, CoD4, CoH, BF2
mIRC, mumble, xfire, TS, vent

So any program that could take care of the majority of the work?

Thanks in advance for help.

jimbobaggies · 24 Jan 2011 at 19:42

Also, do you think I could have the disks better partition for my OS, games, pagefile?

m4cc45 · 24 Jan 2011 at 19:48

Pagefile should be on your fastest drive. Steam would be okay as you just re-run the steam.exe and all is well the rest are manual installs which shouldn't take to long/

mIRC, etc. are again reinstalls but they take seconds - you could, with vent and mirc for example just copy the folders but then you'll have to run the exe's or create shortcuts for them rather than having the program recreate them for you.

M.

mrk · 24 Jan 2011 at 19:49

Why have you moved the PF to another harddrive? It makes no difference on an OS above XP (even on XP the difference isn't all visible on a modern HDD anyway).

The bulk of your data can be backed up using Windows 7's backup and restore feature, create a backup task then restore once the OS is reinstalled. Everything else can be quickly done manually.

Just leave the pagefile as is and system managed. See FireWizard's thread on it as well.

SiriusB · 24 Jan 2011 at 19:53

Steam will work fine, just have to reinstall the application.

Your other games may work as well - you will just have to create your own shortcuts and restore the save folders to their original locations etc.

For other applications, give this a try: http://ninite.com/ will save you a fair amount of time.

There is nothing wrong really with your partitioning. The last few years I haven't bothered as I tend to use full HDDs for one task [why not, they're so bloody cheap these days].

Raumarik · 24 Jan 2011 at 19:56

Agree with SiriusB, no need to partition, it can only limit use of the drive really. Use folders instead these days personally.

ninite is an ace program, download and pick the apps you want now, leave the .exe on a HDD you won't be wiping then once Windows 7 is up and running get Steam downloading and start up the ninite installer, that's a bulk of the jobs done straight away!

jimbobaggies · 24 Jan 2011 at 19:56

HDD1 = WDC WD2500YS-01SHB1 (7200 RPM, SATA-II)
HDD2 = Seagate ST3320620AS (7200 RPM, SATA-II)

I've always been under the impression from various guides etc that the pagefile should be kept on a different drive to your OS.

Also, with mIRC etc that are also installed on my games drive, isn't there a specific folder that I can just copy back into my profile once Windows is reinstalled?

C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming

SiriusB · 24 Jan 2011 at 20:00

If there are settings you wish to keep, you can use the migration tool. Windows can back up your profile and restore it to the new install, though it would be prudent to make your own backup too - just in case.

The pagefile will be quite happy on C:\. There used to be a small performance gain in having it on a separate HDD. If all your HDDs are mechanical SATA of the same general performance, I see no reason to move it. Otherwise, shove it on the fastest disk you have.