Windows 7 install 100MB on 2nd partition

brucewol

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I just did a W7 install on a 1.5 TB drive with 2 partitions. The first is about 300 GB and contains W7, the second around 1,200 GB has the 100 Mb reserved partition. I want to be able to do a full backup of the OS using software like Acronis. So now Acronis wants to back up the C and D drive which contains the 100 MB. I'd like to put other "stuff" on the D drive and not need to back it up in order recover my system if needed. So my thought is to use W7 to shrink the D drive down to 1 GB or so and then partition the remaining space as an E drive for my "stuff". That way I can use Acronis to recover my system without it needing to back up all my other "stuff". Make sense. Seems like it's easier then trying to move the 100 MB and all it does is use up a drive letter.
 
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So let me see if I have this right.

To achieve what it is I understand you to be trying to achieve I would have installed Windows onto a single partition with all the space allocated to that partition.

Windows would then create an extra 100 MB system partition.

Once Windows was installed, I would shrink the volume to a 'minimum' and create a new partition with the space regained.

(Or I could create a small partition myself during the Windows installation and the shrink one and extend the other.)

Then I would use Acronis to back up the image on the C: drive as well as the 100 MB partition created by the installer.

Would that process have got you to where you want to be?

himnextdoor

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Acronis will give you the choice of what to restore, though, won't it?

You will be able to restore only the C: drive and the 100 MB partition in order to get your operating system back.

But won't you have to create the image on an external drive first?

I mean, how can Acronis create an image of a drive that is constantly changing because Acronis is writing to it?
 

brucewol

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Not sure how Acronis does it but you can create an Image of the active partition and then use this to do a full recovery of your system. The options are select individual folders, files or select disks if you want to be able to do a full recovery. I use the select disk option because I can do a full recovery if needed or browse the backup and select individual files. With the disk option, you can not select specific folders on the backup. Acronis has the smarts when you initial select disk, that it has checked both the c and d drive. Yes, I probably could select all of the c drive and just the 100 mb on the drive on tghe recovery. But then my Acronis OS restore would be bloated with all my other "stuff". Say I wanted to keep a bunch of software install zips on the D drive that I could easily download again. Sure wouldn't want to carry this all around with my OS restore.

So, any problem with shrinking the 100 mb drive down. If I had used W7 to format, partition the disk on installation I think I would have ended up with a small 100 MB drive, probably hidden and my OS C drive that I could determine the size of and a bunch of unallocated space. By shrinking, I'm trying to get back to something like that without reinstalling the OS.
 

brucewol

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Okay, did pretty much what I said on a test machine first. Problem machine with new W7 was a friends computer who is a CPA and had a lot of tax info on the machine that was critical for her business. Couldn't risk losing any of it. Annoying that W7 just grabs a partition without asking first so I could have created just a separate small partition for just the boot stuff.
 

brucewol

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As I said in my first post, "

"I just did a W7 install on a 1.5 TB drive with 2 partitions. The first is about 300 GB and contains W7, the second around 1,200 GB"

I didn't want the boot stuff put on the 1,200 partition, expected it to be put on the c drive or ask me to setup a new partition for. So now that it was put on the 1,200 GB, I was asking if I could shrink the boot stuff down to 1 GB or so, and then assign a new partition to the resulting unallocated 1,199 GB. Was pretty sure that would work but wanted to get an affirmative response on my question. Never did get an affirmative response, so I recreated the situation on a test machine. I've used shrink, delete partition, allocate, format many, many times to change the size of partitions. Just never did it to the partition that had the boot stuff on it.

I posted my results so any in the future reading this post would see that there was a solution. I don't have any problems now. Well, at least regarding this post :;)
 

himnextdoor

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Ah! I see. :)

It was the mention of tax files that confused me. I thought you were trying to use Acronis to rescue 'lost' data.

But, and I use Acronis myself, my approach to the partition size question would have been to let greedy Windows have the largest partition but make C: bigger than D: so that the O/S goes onto C:.

Then, when the install was done, I would 'Shrink the volume' in 'Computer Management'.

It would be then that I would back-up the image.

And there is a feature in Acronis that allows you to restore on a file by file basis.

Is your friend's data backed up?

I only ask because rescuing data from an image is not the same as recuing data from the drive.
 

brucewol

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It wasn't greedy windows that caused me the problem but rather devious windows that put the boot stuff on the "d' drive without my ok. With the W7 upgrade, I also decided to update Acronis from 2009 to 2013 in spite of the new fluffy interface so I could get the auto cleanup features. Since the boot stuff was now on the "d" drive, in the default install of Acronis, it wanted to backup both the c and d drive. Since I'm selecting Acronis drive backup, I can't unselect everything but the boot stuff. It's either select the drive or not. If Acronis thinks I need to backup the boot stuff, I'm okay with that. And I certainly don't want to go through the effort to move the boot stuff back to the c drive.

So I thought the best thing was to shrink the d drive to 1 GB or so and then reallocate the space to another drive where I could put "stuff" that I didn't want the default install of Acronis to backup.

So in summary, devious windows put the boot stuff on my big 1,200 GB drive. Acronis wanted to backup both the c (300 GB) and d (1,200GB) drive. I wasn't happy. After shrinking the d rive down to 1 GB to hold the boot stuff and allocating the remaining 1,199 GB to another drive, I expect to be happy.

.

 

himnextdoor

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So let me see if I have this right.

To achieve what it is I understand you to be trying to achieve I would have installed Windows onto a single partition with all the space allocated to that partition.

Windows would then create an extra 100 MB system partition.

Once Windows was installed, I would shrink the volume to a 'minimum' and create a new partition with the space regained.

(Or I could create a small partition myself during the Windows installation and the shrink one and extend the other.)

Then I would use Acronis to back up the image on the C: drive as well as the 100 MB partition created by the installer.

Would that process have got you to where you want to be?
 
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