Questions about how you set up Drives

I own an ASUS G1S and using the disks that came with the notebook. I did a clean install of Vista on a brand new 320 HDD. I chose an option to create two partitions. The partition resulted in:

Drive C – 178GB (OS)
Drive D – 119GB (Data)
Total - 297GB

Here are some questions

-What happened to my other 23 GB of HHD space
-Shouldn’t Drive C only hold my OS/Drivers, why does windows default “My Documents” to be saved on Drive C, is there a way to change this. Do I just cut and paste?
-Isn’t there a way to have windows default my programs to my D Drive instead of C, can I cut and paste here again?
-I want to install Windows 7 Beta 64Bit. Is there a way to have Windows 7 to have its own letter drive? I read that I should shrink Vista on the C drive to make room for Windows 7.
-How do Drivers work with Windows 7? Do I reinstall the ones I used for Vista?
-Do I have to install programs twice once for each OS?

I basically want to run a set up that looks like the following;

Drive C – Vista OS
Drive ? – Windows 7 OS
Drive D – Data/My Documents/Programs

Is this possible?

 

computers multiply by 2^10 = 1024
manfacturers multiply by 1000

A HDD advertised as 250GB only has about 232GB - so 297GB sounds about right.

You may want to check how many Bytes it has an then divide it by 10^9

 

Microsoft Windows use "gigabyte" for 1,073,741,824 bytes (2^30 bytes).

So 320GB/(2^30)~= 298GB.

 

When you create partitions, all Windows related files go onto the primary partition, which is C:. The other partitions are created as non-bootable sections of the drive with empty space that you can put anything you want into. The "missing space" isn't missing - it's used for drive formatting.

You're better off using W7 if you have 2 separate drives (you should always have 2 anyway). You can do it on a partition, but you're playing with fire if you have a problem. Remember it's in Beta form right now, and if you're not that familiar with drive partitions, setups, drivers, and other advanced system techniques, you're asking for Murphy to pay you an extended visit.

If you want the best info on W7 64, go to Start64.com. Anything and everything 64 bit is there. Remember also if you're still going to forge ahead to make sure and do as much research on all potential problems, both with W7 64 Beta, your system, your system with W7 64. Make good use of the Dell Support Forums to find anyone else who's done something similar to see what problems they've experienced.

 

The My Documents folder is somewhat special. If you right click on it and select Properties, you will see a TARGET folder location. If you change that location, say to D:\My Documents for example, then My Documents will now be located on D.

 

I made D drive my default partition for My Documents and Mozilla profiles (Firefox, Thunderbird) using this guide. It's for XP but may work with Vista