Windows 7 system Windows.old file magic

Introduction: At the moment when the 120GB "large-capacity hard disk" appeared, how to partition the large hard disk reasonably became the focus of the user's hot discussion. Especially after Microsoft released the Windows XP system, users can find a lot of reasons for the argument that "the big hard disk should be divided into several districts" and "how should the C disk be divided", "the public said that the public is reasonable, the woman said that she is reasonable." ", the discussion is very enthusiastic. Finally, in the time when Windows XP is popular, everyone seems to default to the phrase "3 to 4 partitions are reasonable." But now, with the release of Windows 7, the topic of "how to partition" has once again caught the attention of users.

Why is there a controversy in the Windows XP era, and renewed controversy after the release of Windows 7? The author believes that this is related to the hard requirements of the two-generation operating system for system format partitioning.

With the NTFS format partitioning that appears in Windows 2000, the user basically does not agree with it at the beginning. This is reflected in the habitual choice of FAT32 every time the user installs the system, regardless of the existence of NTFS. Until Windows XP was released, more and more users were affected by "NTFS is more secure than FAT32", and slowly began to use NTFS format partitions in Windows XP. (Another reason is that the FAT32 format cannot save files larger than 4GB. This is also an important reason for many users to enable FAT32 in Windows XP and use NTFS.)

It is the improvement of the disk management format. After the release of Windows 7, the user once again set off the controversy about how to partition a large hard disk. Why do you say that?

On the Microsoft Windows 7 Chinese official page, there is a description: "The location of the backup is determined by the available hardware and the information to be saved in the backup. For maximum flexibility, it is recommended that you back up Saved on the external hard drive."

As a result, computer users understand that Microsoft has both the positive and negative aspects of the benefits of backing up files to "external hard drives", in fact, to remove In addition to backing up important files on the external hard drive, the internal hard drive is actually divided into one zone. The reasons for this view are as follows:

1. Even in the case of a Windows 7 system crash, when the user overwrites the installation, the user data will not be damaged due to the existence of the "Windows.old" file; Br>

Tip: What is "Windows.old"?

Under Windows Vista and Windows 7, when the user overrides the installation system, the system will automatically generate a "Windows.old" file in the original system hard disk partition. After reinstalling, Windows 7 will transfer the files in the three directories "Windows", "Program Files" and "Users" in the original system to the "Windows.old" folder.

2. Don't need to temporarily "move space" for copying large files;

3. Convenient library file management and indexing under Windows 7, users will not find files because of cross-partition speed reduction ;

4. Hard disk space utilization can be maximized.

In addition, I think that Windows 7 can only be divided into one user, but also lists the reasons from the reverse:

1. Multi-partition users, when using PQ and other software to re-partition the hard disk, It is easy to lose data, even partition table errors, and extremely dangerous problems with hard disk recognition.

2. Using Ghost to redo the system is equivalent to completing the formatting and new security, which will make the original partition data all lost. (System restore or installation under Windows 7, users will not lose data due to the existence of "Windows.old" files.)

And users who use a partition under Windows 7 still use "multi-partition" "Easy file management and other reasons to refute, and think that the "multi-partition" way, after many years of tests by Windows XP, shows that it is a reasonable way of disk management.

Editing:

From an ordinary user's point of view, the author believes that Microsoft introduced the library file management method for Windows 7, which has met the "large hard disk" from the basic conditions. Only one district is required. In particular, the management and search of library index files, it has completely replaced the Windows XP resource manager. But if it is a multi-partition, users also need to index different partitions (or partition files), which is undoubtedly a more detour for themselves.