Hello Folks,
I have an Acer Aspire 5920 Laptop running Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 2. However, I was thinking of loading Windows 7 and making the laptop ‘Dual Bootable’.
I understand that Windows 7 is best loaded onto it’s own partition, and this is where the problem arises.
My laptop came with a 250GB SATA HDD, which I have upgraded to a Samsung 640GB SATA HDD by making an image using Macrium Reflect. This process went without a hitch. I also used the same method to upgrade my wife’s Compaq laptop to a similar 640 GB hard drive.
My problem is related to the structure on the hard disc, as supplied by Acer, in that it was set up with four partitions. I understand four is the maximum number of ’Basic Partitions’ that can be accommodated on a Single Hard Drive. The Drive allocation is as follows:-
Partition 1 (no Drive letter assigned) EISA Configuration (with a capacity of 10.74 GB) (The was the Original Capacity of this partition)
Partition 2 (Drive C: assigned) ACER (now with a capacity of 150.19 GB) (which I was able to extend)
Partition 3 (Drive D: assigned) DATA (now with a capacity of 432.04 GB) (which I was able to extend)
Partition 4 (no Drive letter assigned) EISA Configuration (with a capacity of 3.25 GB) (The was the Original Capacity of this partition)
I assume that Partition 1 is the Recovery Partition and that Partition 4 may have something to do with the Drivers.
I was thinking of relying on a Disc Image for Back-up and Restoration purposes, rather than the Recovery Partition. Surely, if a hard drive fails the Recovery Partition would be useless. An up-to-date Disc Image would be better.
Format the Laptop hard drive, and create four partitions with a larger Partition 4 say around 20 GB, for Windows7, by reducing Partition 3.
Copy the Images of Drive C: to Partition 2 and Drive D: to Partition 3.
Then Load Windows7 onto partition 4.
I am not sure if this would work, but if everything did work out, I would then make another Disc Image of the new layout with Vista on Partition 2, as it is at present, and the new installation of Windows7 on Partition 4.
Otherwise I could Format the Hard Drive, and create four partitions with 100 GB Partitions in positions 1, 2 and 4.
Reload Drive C: and D: into Partitions 2 and 3 then load Windows 7 to Partition 1
Make an image of the new layout
Any Help would be appreciated

Brian Walker
www.danceunlimited.org.uk

You need only one boot(system) primary partition for booting Windows 7 and Vista.

You could partition your drive with 3 primary partitions:
1) recovery ? (10.74 GB)
2) drivers ? (3,25 GB)
3) boot(system) - should be minimum 100 MB, "good" size would be 300-400 MB.
This partition must be primary and active !

and an extended with many logical partitions inside for
1) Windows 7 (at least 60 GB)
2) Vista (at least 60 GB)
3), 4) .... partitions for whatever you like.

I would backup everything.
Then format and partition disk.
Then restore from backup partitions for "recovery, drivers, vista, Windows 7"

Then run Windows 7 StartUp repair - up to 3 consecutive times.
Now you would have a bootable Windows 7.

Then add Vista to boot configuration using bcdedit or a BCD GUI utility.
Then add "recovery" partition to boot menu. (You have to examine how it is booted before you start the whole exercise - display BCD contents and understand it !)

The "drivers" (?) partition is like a container - no need to boot from it just assign a drive letter to it.

I would suggest Visual BCD Editor (http://boyans.net) as a GUI alternative for bcdedit.

If any questions or uncertainities - don't hesitate to ask, the exercise is not trivial.

Note:
The system(boot) partition can be also the Vista or Windows 7 partition. Just when Windows 7 installs on empty disk it creates this "SystemReserved" partition and a separate primary for itself. The SytemReserved has its pros and cons....but it is the only really primary partition you need, all other partitions could be logical.

i 2nd that , well said and done