Reformatting question

[matt101]

Hi guys, I REALLY need to reformat windows 7. But I have a tonne of steam games. I have a single 500gb drive. Could I shrink the drive to 400gb and use the 100gb as another partition. Then would I be able to backup all my steam games etc. to the 100gb partition. Then install windows 7 on the 400gb partition, reinstall all my files from the 100gb partition and then finally delete the 100gb partition and extend the new windows 7 install to the full 500gb.

Fast responses would be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[treefrog07]

Why not buy a 1TB HDD and clone your existing HDD to that?

 

[matt101]

because i'm not made of money, and could someone please care to answer my question- I still don't know if it's possible.

 

[wes2880]

It will work. I've done that before. Just pay close attention to which partition you format. Been there, Done that.


I actually always have at least two hard drives in my setup, whether I get the drives from 2 physical disks, or from 2 partitions on one physical disk. I have about 50gb for the boot drive, and all the rest stays on another drive so if windows quits, I won't have to worry about losing anything except my settings. All my important stuff is on D: and I just link the folders to my libraries and it shows up just like if everything was on C:.

 

[4745454b]

The nice thing about steam is you can drag that folder around to your heats content and it will still work. I've moved my folder 3 times now to bigger partitions/drives as I get more games.

Do you have any drive big enough? Perhaps some old 40 or 80GB laying around? Even if its IDE it will be ok. What you want to do should work, but odd things can happen when you are resizing partitions. You should back up any data before you do so, but of course you don't have the room...

 

[matt101]

It will work. I've done that before. Just pay close attention to which partition you format. Been there, Done that.


I actually always have at least two hard drives in my setup, whether I get the drives from 2 physical disks, or from 2 partitions on one physical disk. I have about 50gb for the boot drive, and all the rest stays on another drive so if windows quits, I won't have to worry about losing anything except my settings. All my important stuff is on D: and I just link the folders to my libraries and it shows up just like if everything was on C:.

Now that sounds like a plan. I am definitely going to do what you said once I have finished backing up everything. But one question, how do you link the libraries (presumably you mean applications and folders etc.) back up to windows 7 upon a new install? because I've never come across how to do that.

Thanks

 

[wes2880]

I just put my installed applications on C: because if I put them on D:, when I reinstalled windows, the files would be there, but they wouldn't be installed. Whenever I save files in a program though, I make sure to save them somewhere on D:.


To link folders to your libraries (Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos) Open the file manager, and right click on whichever library you want to add too and then click properties. In the window, you'll see library locations; this is every folder thats included in the library you chose. you can remove the ones you don't use and add whatever you want. To remove a location right click it, and click remove. To add a folder, click the "include a folder" button in the properties window and then find the folder and that's all there is to it.

I leave certain things on C: drive just because I don't want to mess with them, or its more convenient. I have to save my bookmarks and email messages and whatever is on my desktop at the time. I just backup important stuff as I go along to D:.