Would it be easy to create a new partition and install Vista?

Hi,

I was wondering if I already have a PC at home and a valid copy of Vista 64-bit (I get it for free through my University), is it easy to create a new partition on my current HDD and install Vista to it?

I don't want to lose any data that is already on the drive (currently in two partitions) and I would like to easily remove the partition and go back to just having the two...

My reason is I am buying a new laptop soon and I want to try out Vista, even if it will run badly, just to see what it is like, because it's a toss up between a new PC Laptop which will have Vista pre-installed or going to a Mac and dual booting OS X and Win XP.

 

yeah it should be easy enough, all you have to do is make sure the partition is big enough for it and you shouldnt really encounter any problems. how big is your HD? and how big are your other two partitions?

 

TBH i wudn't even bother running vista on anything other than a dual core cpu and ddr2 ram.....

 

It's always better to install your OS into a separate partition, that way if anything goes wrong (and I've learnt this from experience) you don't lose everything...

Just create a partition that's about 20GB in size, iirc Vista takes 15GB on a basic install so adding 5GB will give you that extra bit of space that you might need for pagefile.sys and other temp files.

Install SP1 as well, you'll find a mild performance boost, I did anyway.

Personally I'd buy a new PC notebook, mainly because Macbooks are overpriced (because the majority of people who buy them are only interested in "does it look cool" imo) and software is more commonly written for Windows afaik.

Oh really? I run it reasonably well on a single core AMD Turion 64 mobile CPU rated at 2.2ghz, ok I've got 4Gb of RAM which the OP could do with getting some more, 1.5Gb for Vista is really scraping the barrel, ideally you need 2Gb in my experience of Vista so far. And my Vista install runs better than my mates HP that has an Intel C2D 1.66Ghz CPU with 2Gb of RAM!

 

Sorry guys if I didn't make it clear. I don't plan to run Vista as my main OS on my current machine. It's just to try out the features more than anything as I have a free copy of legit Vista.

When I buy a new Laptop (Dell XPS) I would get Vista with it. Just want to see if I prefer Vista or Mac OS X. If I got a Mac i'd stick with OS X and XP because I already have a genuine version of XP.

 

A While ago, I used gparted to split one of my partitions so I could dual-boot into Vista while keeping my XP and all my file intact.

It worked like a charm. However, the few times I've tried to split my Vista partitions, it has corrupted them and I've had to run the Vista recovery in order to get my system running again. (I think it corrupts some type of boot files, but I'm not sure.