question about dual booting

S

sarus86

New Member
ok so i have a question about dual booting, so im thinking about doing it with XP and windows 7, but so from my understanding i have 2 partitions one for xp and the other for 7, but now my question is do i need a third one for data? i have read a few things were people create a 3rd partition and they say it is only for data so i am kinda confused about that.
 
It's always best to have a separate partition for data. So if your going to be dual booting then yes, setup 3 partitions on your drive.
 
It keep it separate from the Operating system in case you ever need to reinstall windows, most of your data will be on a separate partition. If you use an email client though, your database folders will always be on the os partition that will need to be backed up.
 
hmm, ok so as im just trying to learn all this stuff right now i had another question, so when you partition your hdd into 3 parts, 1 data, then 1 OS then then other OS in the other partition, now when i go to access my data, like say i make a word document using XP and then later im on my windows 7 operating system, am i able to access that word document? or can i only access stuff on the operating system that i created it on?
 
As long as you have the same program installed on the other operating system you can access the file.
 
ok hmmmm... so ok another question then, so again say im creating like a word document on one OS and i do file save how is it going to know to save it to my data partition? like how does that work?
 
You save the file to your data partition. When you click on save it asks you where you want to save it. So if you only have 1 hard drive in your system with 3 paritions. Then for example your partitions are C is for XP, D is for Windows 7 and E is for data. You will want to save it to your E drive.
 
Also remember that a lot of programs allow you to set "Default file locations". I you look for these options and set your "save" locations to the data drive they will always look to load and save on that drive.
No matter what the OS is using that program the data will always reside in your "data" partition.
 
so one more question what software do you recommend using to resize an existing partition that you already have so you can then create new partitions for the new OS and data partition? i have heard of people using a program called GParted, is that one any good or is there a better one?
 
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