Partitons - need a bit of advice

Hi there

This is probably a dumb question that I really ought to know the answer to but I don't so I'm gonna ask anyway.

I have a triple boot system on my laptop, XP Home 32 bit, Vista Home Premium 32 bit and Windows 7 RC 64 bit.

As I don't use Vista all that much and I can do what I was doing in Vista in Windows 7 I would like to remove the Vista partition because I'm running short on space.

So what I would like to know is can I make an Acronis backup of the Vista partition only, format the partition after doing so and then at a later date restore that partition if I need to without affecting any other partition?

And if I do come to restore the partition but don't have the exact same amount of space but I have enough space will Acronis be able to restore the partition still?

One thing I should point out is that the partition Vista is on is the active partition with the boot.ini and other associated boot files/structure on it so I'm kind of unsure how to do this without totally borking my laptop.

Also the Vista partition has an extended partition on it that is the Data partition I use for storing all my bits and pieces I use in all OSs will that be affected in anyway?

Can I just delete the Windows and Program Files folders on the Vista partition?

I ask these questions because my Windows 7 partition is only 20gb and I only have 1.2gb left while my Vista partition is a 95 gb partition with 33gb left.

Thanks in advance for any help on this.

 

You should be able to do that without any issues.
You could run a repair after you format to repair BCD. Windows 7 install DVD can fix this.

 

So just format the Vista partition and put in the Windows 7 DVD and run the system repair function then? Currently the Vista parition is the active one so do I not have to set the Windows 7 (or XP) partition as Active?

Just formatting the Vista partition and putting in the Windows 7 DVD and running a repair seems too easy to me.

 

format vista partition then use disk management to inactivate the drive.

if any problem happened next restart put the W7 DVD and run recovery tools it will fix start up problem or any problem exist.

 

Yeah I did that and I lost my XP install, well almost.

Using the XP disks recovery console wasn't working, I tried fixmbr, fixboot, bootcfg /rebuild and it still wouldn't work.

The problem was that because I had formatted my Vista partition which had all the boot files on it I no longer had the boot.ini, ntldr and ntdetect.com files.

So I had to restore them to the Windows 7 partition from the backup I made using Acronis True Image prior to formatting the Vista partition.

Then I had to edit the boot.ini and deduct 1 from the partition number listed in the boot.ini for the XP partition because it wouldn't boot because it was looking for a partition that wasn't there, because not only did I format the Vista partition I somehow managed to delete it in the process of restoring the boot files from the backup I made using Acronis so I had one less partition.

I knew it was just too simple to format the Vista partition and use the Windows 7 disk to repair the startup.

So anyway I now have XP back and Windows 7 RC is working with some extra space on the partition now that I've got rid of Vista.

Thanks for the advice.