Format specific partitions before installing Vista?

I decided to go for Vista since both my Windows XP installation and 1900xt died at the same time. Got a nice DX10 card and 1gb more ram for almost nothing so I figured why not. It's my first time installing Vista, and because I've had some problems with partitioning and formating in the past with fresh XP installations, I decided to ask here first before I do anything stupid.

My dilemma is that I've got five partitions, with two different HDDs. Like so:
Drive1: C: Current XP installation.
Drive1: E: Junk.
Drive1: F: Junk.
Drive2: K: Junk.
Drive2: L: Backup of stuff from my soon to be "XP era".

I want the whole Drive1 HDD completely formated with no "hidden" files left. Then combined and broken into two partitions with sizes of my choosing.
I also want the K: partition completely formated, but L: has to stay as it is. K: and L: remain the same size as before.

The result should look like this:
Drive1: C: Fresh clean partition where Vista goes.
Drive1: E: Fresh clean partition.
Drive2: K: Fresh clean partition.
Drive2: L: Backup of stuff from my "XP era", along with a bunch of pre-downloaded apps for Vista (NOD32, Comodo firewall, office etc.)

The big question(s)
Is it possible to do this when doing a clean install of Vista? Or will I have to format/merge beforehand with something like PartitionMagic? Also, is there a risk of losing L: (should I backup the most important stuff to a dvd)?

Cheers

All this is completely possible with Vista. You may have to jerk about with drive letters when the install is done, but if you get a pen and paper to keep track you should be fine (the jerking about is an XP thing as well though)

Yes, like Daniel mentioned you can do this through Vista setup. First you'll want to create a back-up of the L:\ volume to be safe. Next during the Setup stage (the "Where do you want to install Windows" page), click the "Drive options (Advanced)" link, and one by one select each partition on your primary HDD (C:\, E:\, and F:\) for deletion. Next create 2 partitions on this freshly partitioned / unformatted drive. Then format the K:\ volume, highlight the first partition on your boot drive (what is now and will be C:\) and start the installation.

Nice quick edit there

redduc900 said:

Yes, you can do this through Vista setup.

Click to expand...

I can't believe I beat redduc to it...

Thanks for the help guys! Everything is installed and working properly. Not a single hickup encountered