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Note: Read through this whole post before starting any step of the install process.

This tutorial here does a good job but I'd like to expand on it by saying a few things. First off, I always recommend formatting your hard drive and starting fresh. Upgrading is ok but starting fresh is great with everything.

When you get here:


Be sure to click "Custom (advanced)". That will land you here:


Then click "Drive options (advanced)" and that will take you here:


Use the "Delete" button to delete all partitions (it will ask if you're sure) until you have 1 whole chunk of "Unallocated Space".

Here's where I kind of stray away from the tutorial. For those that have a single hard drive and store your OS, programs and files on it, I recommend making 2 partitions on your hard drive. The reason for this (and what this is) is that since hard drives are mechanicaly spinning circles, the outer edge spins faster than the inside. This means that anything on the outside of the disk platter is accessed faster than anything on the inside. So you can improve loading times by putting only the necessary things on the outside edge like Windows and programs while keeping MP3's and non-loading time intensive things towards the inside of the disk platter. The way you do this is by making partitions.

Now, if you store ALL of your files on another drive and ONLY have Windows & programs on your main hard drive, this won't apply to you. Here's how to do it:

- During the install process
Click "New" on the page shown in the last image above ^^. The amount that you enter in the box should only be enough for Windows & programs. This varies person to person, you'll have to see how much you use. For me, my OS partition is 210GB in size. To get that, you have to enter it in Megabytes. If you want yours to be 200GB large, you would have to enter 204800 MB. This is 200 * 1024. I won't go into why you have to do this but pretty much it's whatever amount you want in GB times 1024 to get the MB value. After doing this you'll end up with a partition and a chunk of Unallocated Space. Go ahead and "Format" and install on that partition. After installing Windows, click on the Start menu, right-click on Computer and click on Manage. This will bring up Computer Management. Then click on Disk Management which is in Storage. You will see on Disk 0 a chunk of Unallocated Space. Right-click on it and create a new partition, click next through all the windows that come up. (I'm a little hazy here, I'm not sure if creating a partition will automatically format it or not) Then you can right-click on that new partition and click Format. Name it what you want and continue. Now in My Computer you will have 2 disks. Stick your files on the 2nd one and that will help speed up loading times on your main one.

- Inside a installation of Windows Vista or 7
Not now, too much typing.

Finally, back on the tutorial shown WAY above, when you get to this screen:


It WILL seemingly hang on 0% for a bit. I don't know why, maybe it's indexing the files to copy or something but give it time, it will show like 9% eventually then the rest goes pretty quick.

lol. Is this final? Your HD tip btw is excellent for people who can't get enough of optimization. Honestly I think there should be one manual that comes with all comps that have tips like that.