If you haven't already, get yourself a copy of Acronis True Image 2014, now on sale till the end of the month.
Great for backups but also good for cloning hard drives when upgrading them, I suspect that might come in useful soon.
 
Cheers

CakeAlexS
If you haven't already, get yourself a copy of Acronis True Image 2014, now on sale till the end of the month.
Great for backups but also good for cloning hard drives when upgrading them, I suspect that might come in useful soon.
 
Cheers

 
Thanks. I'm using Acronis True Image 2009 for backups. I'm not sure about "cloning hard drives." What benefit do I get from that?

> I'm not sure about "cloning hard drives.
 
Well that's what Acronis does, but I'm thinking about when you need to swap out your smaller hard drive for a larger one. BTW upgrade price is now $30, may be useful if you think you are going to Win8 at any stage.

I'm thinking of using Win 7 for a long time (at least until the next OS is released), and I think I don't need a bigger internal drive at the moment (I'm not buying any more virtual instruments. Bought too many). Also, True Image Home 2009 is working fine. But thanks for your suggestions.  (I'm working less these days to spend more time on music, so I need to save money )
 
(off to bed)

links i've accumulated regarding freeing up hard drive space
 
hhttp://pghboemike.wordpress.com/2013/12/15/reclaim-hard-drive-space/
 
 

 
One huge partition may be a pain to back up.
 

> One huge partition may be a pain to back up.
 
Partition cloning/exact images are always the best way to go unless you like playing Russian roulette with your restores, and backups are always a pain. Plus you can do incremental backups (saving time).

CakeAlexS
> One huge partition may be a pain to back up.
 
Partition cloning/exact images are always the best way to go unless you like playing Russian roulette with your restores, and backups are always a pain.

Not sure if you're agreeing or not, but I'm talking about always having to image 320gb's worth (for example) of a drive with a single partition even if only 80gb's are used.
 
I agree partitions are mostly for organisation (and backups), but that's exactly what I use them for, not for performance.  Separate physical drives for performance.   And SSD's !
 

> Not sure if you're agreeing or not, but I'm talking about always having to image 320gb's worth (for example) of a drive with a single partition even if only 80gb's are used.
 
Doesn't work that way unless you are talking about sector by sector images (which can also be handled by Acronis). By default the images with Acronis will expand when drive space gets larger (they work like system restore points), and you can also do incremental backups after you've done your first image. Images can be taken partition by partition although you can do the whole hard drive if you want to. Cheers... :)

Oh BTW when I said "exact images", yes I was misleading although for general purposes yes they are. Sorry.