Hoping for a quick answer as my need is urgent. I have about 40GB of files on my Win 7 machine that will take quite a while to backup. As a quick, and somewhat dirty solution I thought of doing the following:
- Using Disk Management, partition my drive (400GB of free space) in "simple" format.
- Mark the new partition as drive "D".
- Install Win 8.1 Pro on the new partition.
- Setup dual boot and select Win 8.
- Later, when I have transferred the files from Win 7 partition to Win 8.1 partition (when I have more time for it), delete the old partition and put it back into the Win 8.1 partition.
I want to specifically know a) can I see the partition with Win 7 when I am logged into Win 8.1 so that I can get at the files (Word, Excel, PDF's, etc.), and b) whether I can actually do step "5" above (that is recapture the space from the Win 7 partition when I delete it).
Again, speed is a factor, otherwise I would do it "right" (i.e. backup, format drive, install 8.1).