Creating Partitions For Multiple Os's

Hey, Hope you all are well. I just wanted some insight/advice.

When I first got my laptop it came with Win 8 which obviously eventually upgraded to 8.1. Not gonna lie, I kind of like 8.1, probably because I'm just so accustomed to it at this point. I never bothered going to 10, and hadn't really intended on doing it.

At this point however I can see some issues coming up such as if I were to refresh or reset, it goes back to 8 and then I have to get a million and one updates. I did create a bootable USB with 8.1 but I still end up having to do a good 200 something updates which for whatever reason will only download about 15 at a time and I always have to use a additional software to fix Windows update. And I just replaced my harddrive and installed Windows from the beginning on it, but anytime I'd like to refresh or reset it tells me that its missing files and I'd have to do it with the USB plugged in. Which isn't really an issue of any sort, but I've talked to some other people running into the same problem. And its been over a year, Microsoft doesn't really seem to care to fix it, even though a previous version of 8.1 never had the issue.

Anyways, I thought it *may be time to have Windows 10. But just because there is some features on there I'd like to tinker with, and who knows, maybe I'll love it. But I thought the best idea would be to create a partition and have both on my harddrive. I don't really want to do the whole roll back thing and would like to have both because they would serve different functions for me.

So firstly my question is, what would be the best way to go about doing it? How much space would I need minus what I'd need for my personal files. I know of two ways of doing it, I think dual booting made the most sense to me since I don't mind having to shut down to boot into the other. But opinions are always welcome.

Also once I do have 10, I'm assuming even if I had all the drivers for 8.1 for my laptop, I'd have to do them for the 10 again (I'm assuming that's a hard 'duh!', but just wanted to make sure).

If you guys have any recommendations or ideas or whatever, I'm totally open to hearing it.

Have a good one =]

 

From experience, I would do just as you have thought.
One thing to be careful of- If you have a recovery partition for W8 (8.1) you may not be able to use it afterwards. I know when first offered W10 would disable a recovery partition after a month - I don't know if that is still the case, but worth remembering.
If you do not have a recovery partition , then no problem.
Use disc management to shrink the C: partition to give at least 200gb of unallocated space.
Install W10 on this new partition.

 

That would give you a dual boot system.
Also, instead of trying to update all the drivers in Windows 10, I use driver booster from iobit,
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/iobit_driver_booster.html

 

Think about your data files. If there is a likelihood that both systems will need/want access to them then IMO it's best for them to be shared rather than for each system to maintain its own set. So when I was dual booting 7 and 8.1 I had three partitions - 100GB each for 7 and 8.1 and the rest for my files. This worked very well as I could image the OSs from time to time without the data files/folders and separately backup the data files on a daily basis. I also removed any recovery partitions as imaging is far superior to using recovery.

You may find, if you use disk management to resize and create partitions that you cannot shrink the existing system partition as much as you need to. Best answer to that is to use the free version of Minitool Partition Wizard to manipulate the partitions.

I'm sure to recollect other issues I had to deal with.

Welcome to MG btw

 

I always found that I could look access the data partition,if it was separate from the Cartition. But size of new partition would depend on how much 'playing' with programs that the operative wanted, and thee size of the hard drive they have.
I often use mini partition wizard,and as Earthling says, you can do much more with it. However,manipulating the partitions can cause problems for those without guidance, so if using Mini Partition Wizard, then do ask on here, for any help- I have done many operations with it,and on one occasion, I messed my setup about.
Windows 10, I find can be unforgiving, and I would use Windows disc management first, myself.

 

You can use NTLite to integrate updates in to your install. Using WSUS offline get all the updates, then slipstream them into a Win 8 install, you just have to update it occasionally.
Second before messing with the 'hardware' you can try a software solution, virtual machine. Download Virtual Box and install Win 10 to test drive.