Hard Drive Split


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Hello,

I have a Dell laptop running Vista. I want to try the Windows 7 beta, however I want to keep my original Vista bootable, while still being able to boot into Win 7 when I want to.

Would this work ok:

Split my Win partiton into two partitions and mirror my exisiting Vista install onto the empty partition.

Run the Win 7 install disk, and tell it to upgrade one of the Vista partitions to Win 7.

Does Win 7 take care of the boot menu (so that I can select what version to run?)

Does the upgrade of a vista install work ok?

What Partition app should I use?

Thanks in advance!!

Donald

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Hello,

I have a Dell laptop running Vista. I want to try the Windows 7 beta, however I want to keep my original Vista bootable, while still being able to boot into Win 7 when I want to.

Would this work ok:

Split my Win partiton into two partitions and mirror my exisiting Vista install onto the empty partition.

Run the Win 7 install disk, and tell it to upgrade one of the Vista partitions to Win 7.

Does Win 7 take care of the boot menu (so that I can select what version to run?)

Does the upgrade of a vista install work ok?

What Partition app should I use?

Thanks in advance!!

Donald

You can use Vista's Disk Management Utility. Right click on Computer then select Manage. On the left pane select Disk Management under Storage. Right click on your Vista partition and choose Shrink. Enter the amount of space you want to shrink, make sure it is large enough to hold Windows 7and then click on Shrink at the bottom. Now you have unallocated space. Boot with the Windows 7 DVD, install it normally but make sure you choose the unallocated space when it asks for the destination partition. That's it. When you boot the PC, it will ask you whether you want to load Windows Vista or Windows 7. I did it here and it's working fine. My brother uses Vista normally and i use 7. Good luck. :)

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You can use Vista's Disk Management Utility. Right click on Computer then select Manage. On the left pane select Disk Management under Storage. Right click on your Vista partition and choose Shrink. Enter the amount of space you want to shrink, make sure it is large enough to hold Windows 7and then click on Shrink at the bottom. Now you have unallocated space. Boot with the Windows 7 DVD, install it normally but make sure you choose the unallocated space when it asks for the destination partition. That's it. When you boot the PC, it will ask you whether you want to load Windows Vista or Windows 7. I did it here and it's working fine. My brother uses Vista normally and i use 7. Good luck. :)

OK, so if I mirror my Vista install onto the new partition, I'll be able to upgrade one of the vista installs to 7 quite easily?

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OK, so if I mirror my Vista install onto the new partition, I'll be able to upgrade one of the vista installs to 7 quite easily?

You don't have to mirror Vista to the second partition and upgrade. You can just do a fresh install from the Windows 7 DVD on the unallocated space.

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Yeah, but I don't want to have to install all my apps again. Thats why I want to do an upgrade. So would the upgrade work ok?

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Yeah, but I don't want to have to install all my apps again. Thats why I want to do an upgrade. So would the upgrade work ok?

I haven't tried it to be honest.

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