Upgding from Vista. A few questions

[Chipstik]

Hi there, I was doubtful as to where this should go, either in here, or in the Storage sub-forum, so I apologise if it is in the wrong place.

Basically, I have 2 Hard drives. One is a 200Gb Sata, the other a 500Gb Sata. At the minute, my Windows Vista installation is on my 200Gb, along with all of my program files and documents etc. I got the 500Gb HDD for christmas, and after installing have placed large files on here such as my videos/music collection etc. I have also installed any programs to the 500GB one after it had been installed.

My copy of Windows 7 has just got here and my ideal solution would be to partition the 200Gb drive, install 7 on one of the partitions and have the other 500Gb hard drive for storage with the second partition of the 200Gb for 'overflow' if the 500Gb ever gets full. Would it be possible/desirable to have my program files on a different hard disk (the 500Gb) or would that be pointess? If so, could I move all of my program files from my vista installation now to the 500Gb, then 'point' the new 7 installation to them, or change a value in the registry so that this is where it looks for the systems program files. Thanks for reading, and I would apreciate it if anyone could help me.

 

[Jonmor68]

I would leave the 200Gb drive as is and upgrade to W7 on it and use it to install any programs. Any programs that you installed to the 500Gb I would reinstall onto the 200Gb after upgrading to W7, then reclaim the space on the 500Gb.
That way you have your OS and programs on one and data files on the other.
That will leave you plenty of room for Windows restore points, updates and swap file.
After you upgrade to W7 you could move your documents, photo and music folders to the 500Gb drive, so if the worst happens and you need to reinstall they will be safely on the other drive.
New drives are going so cheap now that if you need more space, get a new bigger drive for backups.