Buy a new Windows 7 PC and it will ship with the operating system pre-installed, as you would expect. Problem is that the configuration is the same across every computer that the manufacturer ships from their factory. Often one large hard drive formatted as one partition or, more likely, sub-divided in to partitions in a manner the manufacturer deems most applicable for its customers.
This doesn’t necessarily suit your requirements and it means that the first thing you’ll want to do is create your own partitions before you start migrating your data from your old PC. The partitioning tools supplied with Windows aren’t great. It’s difficult to merge partitions and impossible to make changes to your system partition whilst you are using Windows.
Until recently, getting hold of partitioning software meant you nearly always had to spend money on commercial software. Now there are free applications for home users that enable you to do most of the partitioning tasks you require: create, delete, merge and enlargen existing partitions.
Partition Wizard Home Edition is free partitioning software for home users and it enables you to do all the basics. However, you can also re-assign a drive letter to your new partition, recover accidentally deleted and formatted partitions, copy a partition to another drive and so much more.
Note that if you want to alter a system partition you need to do this outside of Windows. There is a Bootable CD version of this software which is available to download separately.
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