Multiple OS's

[SXRguyinMA]

Ok, I'm going to be redoing my hard drive soon, and figured I'd partition it after a fresh reformatting to run XP, Vista and W7. Now, if I do all these I've got a few Q's

1. How much space should I allocate for each?

2. Which order should I install them in?

3. Once W7 expires, can I merge that partition with either the XP or Vista partition without reformatting again?

Thanks

[Luke122]

I would go for Vista first, then either one next. Give at least 20gb each for apps + updates, and have one large partition to store media and files that will be accessed by all OS's.

[xRyokenx]

You might want ~50GB for Vista as it's a really bloated OS. I gave it 35GB and it was not happy with me at all.

[SXRguyinMA]

thanks for the tips

[XcOM]

I would go for Vista first, ......

NO NO NO no no NO

You should install them in this order:

XP,
Vista,
Windows 7.

XP won't see the vista boot loader info or windows 7 bootloader info, and vista won't see windows 7's boot info, you should always install oldest to newest.

[nevermind1534]

I thought Vista and 7 used the same bootloader. But xp definitely has to be installed first. You generally want to install the oldest first and the newest last.

[TheMainMan]

Just confirming what XcOM and nevermind1534 said on this one. This is my current OS configuration with XP and Vista on one drive and 7 on another. My 64-bit Vista install was around 14GBs so give Vista plenty of space, same goes for 7. Luke122's suggestion for a seperate partition for storage is critical because Vista and 7 don't like accessing files from another OS' documents folder without editing permissions. It won't cause problems (at least it hasn't for me) but it takes a while if you have a lot of files. A seperate drive or partition means you can point all the OSes there for your documents and they don't need to go into each others file permissions.
Anyways, enjoy 7!

[EspoNation]

merging the partitions no. but you can just delete the W7 stuff from the the 3rd partition and as said about use it for storage. if you wanted to use linux i know Ubuntu self alocates space with what is remaining on the drive.

[Luke122]

NO NO NO no no NO

You should install them in this order:

XP,
Vista,
Windows 7.

XP won't see the vista boot loader info or windows 7 bootloader info, and vista won't see windows 7's boot info, you should always install oldest to newest.

Worked for me.. I did Vista Biz, XP Pro, and Ubuntu, in that order.

[xRyokenx]

I also recommend a separate partition for storage and maybe even one for games as well, unless you want the two together. And what you can do is just make shortcuts in My Documents so that you don't have to click all over to get to your stuff.