I recently had the experience of having my Windows 7 Home Premium OS become “invalid” a year after buying the computer. (forum link below)
http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/genuinewindows7/thread/06dd95b2-4f59-43dc-9b77-c79a6412ba72
Anyway, its water under the bridge now, and I just want to move on.
I backed up all my “pertinent” data to USB network storage and purchased a new copy of windows 7 Professional 64bit (not yet installed).
I would like to reformat and do a clean install.
However it’s always nice to be able to access ALL my previous data, if needed.
It always seems like I eventually need something which I didn’t backup.
I debated on doing an image backup (which can’t be done with Windows Home Premium backup to a network drive), but decided to inquire about another possibility.
So here is what I would like to get some advice on.
I have a relatively new Dell Inspiron N7010 with a 451 GB hard Drive which I am only using 47 GB (plenty of room).
With all that space, I would like to keep ALL my previous data on another partition.
I thought about a dual boot because there are some games my wife likes which will probably not work on a 64 bit OS, but…. I really don’t need the old (Invalid) Windows Home Premium.
I would just like to have access to all my data from every “nook and cranny” of my old partition.
So in other words, can I save my current partition as another drive like “G” which would be easily available on “My Computer” in the start menu?
Now I realize that having everything on one hard drive defeats the purpose of backing up,. but this is just to get me through the initial OS switch.
With time I will diversify my backup.
Chrisl9155
