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Thread: Dual boot

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    Dual boot

    Hi all,

    I don't know if this is the right place for this enquiry but here goes. I currently run Vista home premium and I have been thinking of making my 250GB had drive a dual boot to accommodate Win7. My question is would my hard drive be enough or would I have to replace it with a larger capacity?

    Thanks

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    Re: Dual boot

    A 250GB hard drive should be plenty for the OS installation. The only thing that would possibly need more is applications and documents. Check used space on your hard drive. Try to create the Win7 partition as close to the start of the disk as you can (allowing for your existing partition, of course) for better IO performance. 40GB should be enough for a Windows installation but add as much as you think you will use. Just make sure you back up before messing with partitions - there's a chance your data could get corrupted/lost even if you do everything right. I'd also recommend defragmenting first.

    You can resize partitions from Vista disk management but if it wont let you shrink your existing partition enough you could try a Linux-based partitioner such as Gparted or a bootable tool such as Parted Magic which is based on Gparted. http://partedmagic.com/

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    Re: Dual boot

    Hi,

    I have all my hard disc devoted to Vista at the moment, just the one and only partition if you like. I have read that Vista will shrink my hard drive to accommodate another operating system.
    On the other hand could I place another hard drive in my computer case and just change cables from one hard drive to another?

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    Re: Dual boot

    Yeah Vista does have tools to shrink volumes - right click on computer>manage>disk management. You could use another HDD but I wouldn't advise swapping the round a lot because the connectors aren't designed for that.

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    Re: Dual boot

    Quote Originally Posted by iglepiggle View Post
    Hi all,

    I don't know if this is the right place for this enquiry but here goes. I currently run Vista home premium and I have been thinking of making my 250GB had drive a dual boot to accommodate Win7. My question is would my hard drive be enough or would I have to replace it with a larger capacity?

    Thanks
    That's eeeasily large enough! Unless you have lots of media/games. I wouldn't really bother dual booting these editions of Windows, just go with 7.

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