Partitioning

[Mahesha999]

Hi there, I just bought Dell XPS 15, with 500 GB HDD
I have habit of using 3 partitions.
One for System, 120 GB
2nd 190 GB
3rd 190 GB

But now, there is recovery partition of 13.4 GB, C of almost 200+ GB & Another of again 200+ GB

Is that recovery partition important.
I created the partition backup for the whole C: using Acronis True Image, I hope I can use it to restore original setup if anything goes wrong.

Also I do not think its good idea to have 200+ space for System Partition. 120GB is enough, since I feel its bad to store anything on System partition, as it becomes tedious to backup anything placed on the System partition, if OS corrupts.

Also I have got Win 7 Home Premium. Should I use Ultimate as I do development work using SQL Server & Visual Studio

Its also of 64 bit. Will it matter to run these 32 bit softwares? Also, I heard that Xp mode is not there in Home Premium.

So what should I do?

[Mahesha999]

[continuing from above....]
Is there anyway to partition into 3 volumes, without losing that hidden recovery partition?

[flagstar]

I would not recommend you to upgrade yours to Ultimate because most netbooks processor works very slow with it so it's better to stick with what you have for now...

Back to topic.
Recovery partition is important because in case your Windows is failing (beyond repair), you can always recover it to out-of-the-box state from that partition so deleting it is not pretty much not recommended.

You can use either use Disk Management from within Windows itself or use Gparted. Gparted is linux-based program and it can be use as live cd. If you think system drive (C:) is not worth for 200+GB, just shrink it to preferable partition size.

After that, you'll have some unallocated disk space that can be used to create another partition. (be wary that usually a hard drive can support up to 4 primary partition only) After done through the process, you'll encounter chkdsk when you start your windows, let it run to correct the MFT files and it should be fine afterwards...

[tigerbright]

Hi , here is a site that displays information regarding the various windows versons

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/compare

re 32bit applications, is my understanding that 64bit Windows can process most of those but at 32bit speed

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/understanding-hardware-and-software-for-64-bit-windows

[amit28it]

If you have original windows then its system files will decide by itself that what should be the memory of c partition and at the time you format it for the first time. you can reduce its memory space by yourself....