In can you don't already know it, Windows 7 supports booting from VHD, which I'm a big fan of. This way you don't need to worry with partitioning scheme, shuffling around when you want to install additional Windows versions, backup / restore or these kind of issues. Booting from VHD allows you easy migration to Hyper-V if you chose to do so in the future.
However if you choose to install your OS to a VHD then you need to know that you will loose some things:
- Hibernate support. Unfortunately it seems that there is no way (at least not in the RTM version) to enable that. Sleep support still works fine, but if you need hibernate (or hybrid sleep) then you need to install to a partition.
- Calculate System Score. WinSAT fails to calculate the disk score if your system boots from VHD, because it wouldn't be accurate. Fortunately there is a solution for this. All you need to do is to launch an elevated command prompt and type the following command:
winsat formal -drive D
I found this while trying to setup an HTPC that needed to run Digital Cable Advisor, and while trying to calculate the system performance score it would crash very badly. It seems that they forgot to check if WinSAT actually completed successfully before parsing the results!
Hope it helps!
And if you find a way to enable hibernate while booting from VHD just leave a comment.