Windows 7 Reinstall Question

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I want to do my annual reinstall of Windows, so I have a nice clean and fresh O/S for 2012. Impressivly, I may not NEED to do this as Win & is still very snappy, but I want to do it anyway.

Anyway, I have to normal hard drives in Raid more for speed and have been fine.

I have two partitions.

One partition (c) 833GB in size and this is my main one with Windows 7 and all programs installed.

The other partition (d) is around 97GB in size and is my Data drive for large files such as DSLR photographs or downloads. I only have around 13GB of data.

My question is do I have to 'get rid' (delete them both and remake the partitions and the raid array) of both partitions for a good reinstall of Win 7 or just format the C drive/partition when I get the option to during the Win 7 setup and procede with the installation whilst keeping drivers and files on the d drive?

Finally, is there any good tips for how I should structure my partitions?
 
Can just format the partition you want while leaving the others intact. When I install Windows 7, I normally allocate 100gb to the OS and then the other free space, I usually use for data. This way, if I ever need to format or lose my OS, all my data is still intact in another partition :)

Hope that helps.
 
Can just format the partition you want while leaving the others intact. When I install Windows 7, I normally allocate 100gb to the OS and then the other free space, I usually use for data. This way, if I ever need to format or lose my OS, all my data is still intact in another partition :)

Hope that helps.

When you mean data do you mean additional files like photos, or the installation paths of programs and games?

Thanks. I will keep the partition :)
 
I install everything that gives me a choice in D:. My data - documents, photos etc. - is all in E:. Downloads are also in D: or E:. including drivers, so reinstalling is easy. Many programs when reinstalled on top of a directory they were previously installed in pick up any customisations etc. in the files under the directory - I found Word for example didn't create normal.dot / normal.dotx if they already existed.
 
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