Hard Drive Sections...?!?

[4me2c]

I have a Hard Drive with 3 Sections :

1) 100 MB System Reserve...

2) 295.24 GB NTFS...

3) 2.75 GB Un-Allocated Space...

The OS is Win 7 Home Premium and I want to Add Win 8.1 Home(Core) to it...! What is the Best Way to do so...?!? TIA...!

[stilled]

I would say, partition your NTFS into 2. Partition 1 is windows 7, install windows 8 onto partition 2, would have dual boot upon startup, so you have 2 partitions, when installing windows 8 choose custom installation, then drive options, where your empty partition is, install. Make sure dual boot is enabled in bios, that is how I would do it. You need shrink the existing partition and create the partitions in disk management on windows 7 before starting process of install windows 8.

Partition everything first, enable dual boot, dry run before you begin with installing windows 8 to empty partition/drive.

[Ryu]

thats exactly how I would do as per post #2. once done with installation, you can use EasyBCD free program to configure dual boot settings.:)

[4me2c]

Thanks for those Tips...! The only thing I can't do in Win 7, is Partition the 295.24 GB Partition...! Will Installing the Win 8.1 go ahead and redo that 295 GB Partition to allow Win 8.1 to be in there also...?!? I know that when Installing an OS onto a Clean Hard Drive, Windows will automatically set the Hard Drive up for Installation...

[stilled]

Have administrator account

First:

Go to Computer> Right Click Manage>Disk Management>Disk Management Tool> Select Volume>Shrink Volume>Create New Volume>Spec Volume Size>Assign Drive Letter>Format (NTFS)>Finish

From memory, but those are the base steps,

Dont install 8.1 over existing partition, it will overwrite the 7 install, if you are having problems creating the partition from Windows 7, take some screens of where you running into trouble and can help you through,

[4me2c]

Was just Asking if 8.1 would Allocate Space on that Hard Drive besides what Win 7 was using...! While Searching for More Infro I landed on the Microsoft 8.1 Upgrade Site and it checked to see if I could do it without Problems... 3 Drivers would have to bee Updated in Win 8.1 and when it went to Connect to the Main Site to see what I needed further to do it kept returning... "Unable to Connect, Please Check Your Internet Connection"... I have seen that before, it means they are not gonna support it much longer and continue onto Win 10...! Lol...!

In Computer Management(Run as Administrator) it shows...

Open
Explore
Mark Partition as Active
Change Drive Letter and Paths
Format (Shaded)
Extend Volume
Shrink Volume
Delete Volume (Shaded)
Properties
Help ...!

[dishuser]

win 8 is junk
even worse is being forced to go to 10 from 7
when that day happens will only use linux mint

[stilled]

Was just Asking if 8.1 would Allocate Space on that Hard Drive besides what Win 7 was using...! While Searching for More Infro I landed on the Microsoft 8.1 Upgrade Site and it checked to see if I could do it without Problems... 3 Drivers would have to bee Updated in Win 8.1 and when it went to Connect to the Main Site to see what I needed further to do it kept returning... "Unable to Connect, Please Check Your Internet Connection"... I have seen that before, it means they are not gonna support it much longer and continue onto Win 10...! Lol...!

In Computer Management(Run as Administrator) it shows...

Open
Explore
Mark Partition as Active
Change Drive Letter and Paths
Format (Shaded)
Extend Volume
Shrink Volume
Delete Volume (Shaded)
Properties
Help ...!

You would want to shrink a current volume first, the one with windows 7, then format the new partition to NTFS then install windows 8 on that partition

[4me2c]

I couldn't get the System to Allow a Format of the Un-Allocated Volume so I used the "Extend Volume" and it went into the (C) Section(Lol) making it 297.99 GB...! When checking the Shrink Option again it will only make another Volume of 2.75 GB...! In the (C) Screen it shows : 297.99 GB NTFS, Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)

There are only 2 Sections Now, 1st one is System Reserve 100 MB NTFS and the 2nd one is (C)...!