400 gig External HD at PC World for 110 quid if you order online for store pick-up...cant go wrong at that price (they also got a 320 gig @ £80 iirc!)

Put your HD in a external carrier and buy a new HD where you install Windows

Ok i have made a partition, and now want to format the C drive, how exactly do i do it? do i need to boot from CD if so what key do i tap on boot-up i've tried F5 but thats jus how to get in safe mode etc.

Quote from spankmeyer :

Try to borrow an external disk. Otherwise... how big of a floppy pile would you think 50 GBs would turn out to be?

*inserts disk #1831*

That reminded me... My dad wanted me to install Win 3.11 many years ago on a computer he bought and we didnt have Win 3.11 install...
I went to borrow the disks from a friend of mine and I came back home right after to work on the installation... When I was almost done, my dad came down stairs and handed me this pile of floppy disks.... Over 60 floppy disks..
I was like "WTF?" and he told me he had started on copying the Windows folder from the other computerillepall

weee, good topic
im about to make a fresh install as well. as usual windoof (for not german ppl doof = stupid. nice name for that piece of software ^^) is pretty messed up after about 1 and a half year.
so im going to reinstall.
only 1 HD but 2 partitions (i can backup stuff that way).
ive currently win on D:\ and im going to install it on C:\ .
so.... im going to format C:\ and then ill install windows there.
that shouldnt make any problems with the D:\ win install or?
also, can i (how if possible) uninstall windows from D:\ ? or only format?
and another thing.
if anything does mess up (plz god nooooo) can i use the "old" install on D:\ ?
who can give me some answers?

I have always had either 2 hard drives, or several partitions for just this purpose. I now have the main drive that came with the PC, a 200 gig, and the drive from my old PC, an 80 gig. I have 4 partitions that I use, backup (mostly game file backups), application (downloads), game (downloads) and data. I have always done it this way. It use to be I would install stuff on the partitioned 2nd drive, but not just install to the main drive with windows and have all external downloads and files on the 2nd drive partitioned.

RCGBoosted -

If windoze is on D: then if you do a clean ( reformatted ) install on C: you'll end up with a boot screen giving u a choice of systems to boot 2.

If you then copy your data over to C: and reformat D: then this should be ok but you may still get the bootloader screen ( havn't tried this but I'd expect this to happen )
This is easy enough to get rid of so you should be fine.

It may pay to get a second HD tho as their not expensive and copying your backup data to a second partition of the same drive IS NOT A BACKUP.
Remember, if the drive fails you lose ALL partitions..........

yea...but i cant move stuff from D:\ to C:\ as i dont have enough space.
C:\ - 18 GB cleaned up 12 GB free D:\ - 39 GB almost full.
so....i gotta keep win on D:\ oh well ill survive it

Disks these days are pretty cheap and its always possible to attach a second drive to back things up.
If you have anything important ( setups etc ) it really pays to have a backup.

atm i wouldnt be able to affort a 15$ HD
the important data are saved, i dont think ill lose much...just about 1 GB software, but nothing really important what cant be downloaded again

Quote from whitey6272 :

Ok i have made a partition, and now want to format the C drive, how exactly do i do it? do i need to boot from CD if so what key do i tap on boot-up i've tried F5 but thats jus how to get in safe mode etc.

Try F8 or Delete to get to BIOS.
+1 for partitions, below is a quick pic of a Samurize config I use, showing all my partitions. You can change the default install location (program files) in the registry, in regedit -

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Microsoft > Windows > Current Version

You will find a key called ProgramFilesDir, right click and choose modify. I changed mine to D:/Program Files.

WARNING - Edit the registry at your own risk, no responsilbilty accepted by me etc.

You can move the location of My Documents as well but its a little easier. In windows explorer right click the My Documents folder, choose properties, then click move on the target tab. I moved mine to G:/My Documents.

H:/work is backed up to K:/work with a little batch file and Ive set the page file to its own partition on a different drive to windows to improve performance. And of course, LFS gets its own partition

Now talking about partitions, I have a question. Since I have an off-the-shelf box from Compaq, they don't provide an actual Windows CD. I only have the restore feature of Windows and restore that puts my machine completely back to original configuration.

I have a 250 gig drive, which to me is ridiculous as I posted earlier, I like to partition and install/download stuff onto separate partitions. I'm doing this with a secondary drive, but would like to partition the 250 gig. Problem is, every restore I've ever done with previous machines formats everything and deletes all partitions so you end up exactly like factory.

This is a big problem, since I've attempted to defrag many times and it has taken longer than 24 hours to do. I've canceled it every time because I want to race. Can't go an entire day without racing, or needing something from the net, or the wife getting on the net. I personally don't like having more than 50 gig on a drive partition, but that is impossible when you don't have an actual Win CD. The factory restore would wipe everything out, including any partitions and data on those partitions.

So, with XP, is it still this way with factory restore? Installed programs aren't a big deal, but it is a big deal when you have 100 gb of LFS skins, mpr's, setups, MS flight sim downloads, pics, movies, etc. etc. to back them all up to restore. It would be nice to have a chance of organizing the drive and partitions to not have the fear of loosing everything due to a restore. This has happened to me in the past where I lost all the baby pics when my daughter was born because I had a computer error and had to restore.

Quote from mrodgers :

So, with XP, is it still this way with factory restore? Installed programs aren't a big deal, but it is a big deal when you have 100 gb of LFS skins, mpr's, setups, MS flight sim downloads, pics, movies, etc. etc. to back them all up to restore. It would be nice to have a chance of organizing the drive and partitions to not have the fear of loosing everything due to a restore. This has happened to me in the past where I lost all the baby pics when my daughter was born because I had a computer error and had to restore.

It depends. A lot of the modern restorers are based on PC Angel, and merely rebranded. PC Angel actually gives you an option to reinstall Windows only. However, many manufacturers remove this as its "too confusing". Apparently.

In short, you've got to cross your fingers and hope. The alternative is to get ahold of OEM install media (you, of course, should have a CoA sticker). Some manufacturers use a standard OEM image, where as others (such as Dell) have slightly different media. Whilst you can usually use standard OEM media for these, they may not activate via the intarweb. Phone activation is always "fun" though; if you like typing in 40-something digit strings and don't mind "talking" to someone you can barely understand.

Quote from whitey6272 :

Ok i have made a partition, and now want to format the C drive, how exactly do i do it? do i need to boot from CD if so what key do i tap on boot-up i've tried F5 but thats jus how to get in safe mode etc.

You want to boot off your install cd. You need to make sure the boot order is set correctly in the bios so that it boots off the cd before looking at the hard drive. It will then ask you to press any key to boot off the cd...

thanks for all your help guys.

I tried o re-install windows again and chose to boot from CD but i didn't change boot order, and it installed windows again without re-formating C: and now my partition is the D: drive for some reaswon with windows installed also, i have deleted that windows file and drivers etc so my partition just has the stuff i want kept,
how do i change the drive letter to F: and have D: as ny cd rom drive again?

hope this makes sense,

cheers

Start > Control Pannel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management and in the storage tree you should have Disk Management. Somewhere in that you can do it IIRC.

cheers bud ill give it a go now.

I changed the boot oreder so it was CD rom 1st but it just booted from CD, said press any key to boot from CD, and then went to a select operating system config and started windows? how do i format my hard drive manually...? because this windows setup disk isnt working..