Hi,I have a harddrive partition question. I am trying to get Windows 7 to dual boot with my existing vista OS, the problem is I already have 4 partitions on my harddrive that came pre-installed with the system. I have a C://=OS, D://=recovery and 2 hidden partitions I guess one is a 2.5gb media direct partition and the other a 70mb diagnostic partition. Oh and I have a Dell comp. I am trying to decide what I should delete so I could dual boot and how do I go about doing this? I also dont want to loose the apps that I have installed on Vista so a clean install is out of the question. Can I use the disk management in vista to delete one and add another? What is the best to delete( I'm thinking the 2.5gb hidden media direct)? Obviously I also have to shrink my C:// to make room for W7, and I do have the recovery disks that were supplied by Dell. Is it possible to increase the D:// size and leave the recovery on there and also install 7 onto the same partation, if I do not delete the media direct partition? Any help with this would be appreciated. Cheers.
If you have the recovery disks as you've wrote, then I would delete all the hidden partitions (including recovery), shrunk the C(OS) partition by using Acronis True Image or Acronis Disc Director suite (these I can clearly recommend) and Create a new-n-funky D partition for Win7. I wouldn't advise to unhide the D partition and leave recovery on it, however you can try it - the worst-case scenario would be the loss of recovery partition but you have the recovery media anyway.