I have been having a play about with the beta version of Windows 7. Vista's appearance was dramatically different from XP's, whereas Win7 could almost be a service pack for Vista and, like Vista, finding your way around is IMHO much less intuitive than with XP.

However it did install quickly and it does seem to boot much faster than Vista. I'm still using XP drivers for graphics card and sound card, which work OK. It didn't like Office 2003, which caused the whole PC to hang, so I've installed the 60-day trial version of Office 2007, which seems to be fine (although I don't like Office 2007!).

Installation is a little unconventional in that it creates two partitions - a 200MB partition with no drive letter from which it boots and which appears to contain the Boot Manager and the main "C" drive partition. I discovered this the hard way when I backed up only the "C" partition with Acronis, did a Restore and got an error that the Boot Manager was missing. After having to reinstall Win7, backing up and restoring both partitions with Acronis works fine.

I prefer to watch and wait Mike, no beta installs for me I'm afraid.

Now, that's an idea I might be prepared to try out ..........

I've just acquired a PC tower, I don't know the spec, but it might give me something to play with - all I need is the time to play around.

Even without a Caddy drive, you could install windows 7 on a second fixed HDD and have a dual boot system.

Mike, which "caddy" are you using?

Installation is a little unconventional in that it creates two partitions

Mike I have never understood the need to have partitions on hard drives, especially now with good sized external hard drives for back ups and operating system discs etc. Could you do a bit on the reasons for this - either here on a new thread for the purpose - . I would be grateful for information. Zante.

PS have just found the thread with a little bit on the subject but would like a plain english rundown on the reasons for and against. Thanks Zante.

Hi Zante,

Partitions on a hard drive create extra 'virtual' drives. So instead of just a 'C' drive where everything is stored, you could have D, E, F etc as well.

The main advantages of the extra 'drives' are:

The C drive can be used just for installing programs and operating system.
Your data can be kept on the other drive(s)
If you have to reinstall Windows, you don't lose your data.
The C drive has less to look at to run programs.
Defragmentation is easier to do on each drive.
Backing up is easier because all data is separate from operating system & programs.
PC should operate a bit quicker.

There may be more advantages ........

> There may be more advantages ........

One of the main advantages (I find) is that "Image" backups of the C drive take almost no time at all plus keeping the |Image file small.
(Most of the other benefits have been pointed out in post/s above)

However, I don't use the default locations for either Favorites or Outlook Express downloads, these are kept on/in a file on a seperate drive/partition, that way I don't even lose those when restoring a full backup (Image backup).

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Windows 7
I "think" one of the reasons it creates a second partition is to hold the swap file (System Pagefile) thus ensuring less fragmentation

mm, interesting.
Can't think of anything else to say about it.

I expect it will be where Microdaft hide all the services and general annoyances that users would like to remove or disable.

Aaaah. So it is really only a matter of - say getting a square house with no walls - and thensplitting it into different rooms as it were, to keep - say, furniture in one room, books in another and so on.

I had the idea that partitioning a harddrive would slow it down because you were making two rooms which you then duplicated all the same stuff in, but you are only making different seperate rooms to tidy up the same stuff you would keep in the one big room (. I understand the different drives for peripheals like your external harddrive etc.

I hope you can understand all my waffling above, Thanks Zante.

What you have to remember is that most "Standard" HDD's only contain one disc (Platter) and one seek arm, (a bit like a vinyl record and pickup arm) but because of fragmentation the HDD seek arm has to constantly scan the complete drive to obtain all of the relevant information,
(whereas a vinyl record starts at the beginning and works it way towards the center, because it does not get fragmented it can do this)

But by creating a partition for programs and system files only, windows will not have to scan as many files to access all of the files needed to run a particular program, thus helping to speed-up the process.
(Although the amount of saving on speed access can vary due to the amount of programs installed on the PC)

Apart from defraging the HDD on a reasonably regular basis the only real way of improving speed drastically is by using a HDD with multiple platters and seek arms.