Windows 7 Clean Install

[Sheep]

When you look at the system in disk manager, how are the partitions listed? Do you see a restore partition of some kind (there's probably one there as most OEM laptops do this)?

The partitions are both on disk 0, one is C:, the other is unlabeled. When I boot from the Windows 7 CD, I have the choice of which partition to install to (neither can be selected, as per my original post), and this is where I see that the unlabeled partition is reserved by the OEM. The unlabeled one is empty in Computer Management, but mostly full when viewing from the Windows 7 install screen. Weird?

First, if the restore partition has an option to create restore CDs and you have a CD-R or DVD-R in this laptop, create those disks (you will need anywhere from 1 to 4 blank CDs as this various between OEMs, my HP required 3).

I'll create the backup CDs tonight. I've already located the Vaio Recovery Disk tool, so it should be fairly straightforward.

Once the disks are created, backup any pertinent data either to CDs, a USB thumb drive, or USB Hard Drive.

Backup complete.

Next, and this is very, very, important, go to Sony's website and look up your laptop and download all of the Windows 7 drives and burn them to a CD/DVD as you are going to need them once the install of Windows 7 completes.

I have the drivers on a thumb drive. Check.

Now, once everything is backed up you want to keep, driver CD/DVD ready, and you have functioning restore CDs as needed, there is one last thing that is needed. If your roomate has Vista media (or XP), borrow theirs and make a copy of the disk (you may need this for the install to go forward, if they don't have the media, see if you can track some down so that Windows 7 can check you are upgrading as you don't need to install the prior media, just confirm to the install that you have a prior version for an upgrade). Once you have a prior edition's media in hand along with the restore disks and backed up information, you're ready to begin.

How does one test the functionality of restore CDs?

Secondly, I don't have access to any Vista media in any immediate fashion. The Windows 7 CD I have is not an upgrade CD, but rather the complete OS. In any case, as per Pete's link, it appears you can install the OS from scratch from an upgrade CD anyways?

Insert the Windows Ultimate disks and start the install. As the install begins, it should talk about wanting to repartition the system, go into this option. Within here you will get options to partition the drive as needed, I would opt to creating a partition for the OS and other heavy use programs (minimum of 40G, but probably needs to be larger) and create a second partition for data (storing documents, music, video, etc) that takes up the remainder of the hard drive. Once the partitions are created, install windows 7 to the partition designated as your system partition, the install process should format and then copy files to this partition to do the install. Once the system reboots and starts the install, have the WinXP or Vista media handy, it might ask for it, if it does, insert the media into your CD/DVD drive. Once the install reads this media, it should continue and install. Once the install is complete and you are up in Windows 7, it's time to put the driver CD/DVD in and install all the drivers. Once all drivers are install and you see all drivers functioning properly in Device Manager, you should be able to install all you programs and bring back any data from your backups you made.

If you don't mind, would you explain the reasoning behind partitioning in this manner? For instance, why not have a single partition, and install everything to that. Or, on the other hand, what about a partition that is exclusively for the OS, with everything else on another partition? I remember when installing Vista, the OS needed more space on the hard drive to install than it eventually ended up taking after installation. Will this be the case for Windows 7 as well?

Thank you for the informative replies!