partition question

consult Drive Manager if this is windows. You can now "shrink" partitions in latest windows versions. That will free up space to create a second partition, which after formatting can be used for storage.

Since data exists in places that you are not able to backup, there is some loss. And placing what you can't lose on a drive you are going to install Windows is dangerous. Folk post here all that time asking how to get their files back.
Bob

Since we already have a yes and no answer, figure it's time for a maybe.

Anyway, Bob and James are both correct, it just depends on what you're looking to preserve. Preserving documents, like say a Word document, is easy. I would make sure to have a backup on an external source before trying what James suggests, because there's always a chance the process will hit some kind of snag and then you're left with no choice but to repartition, format and reinstall everything from scratch.

Bob is correct in that a lot of people who come here asking this sort of question want to lump installed programs into the mix. So, not just Word documents, but Word itself. That isn't possible, save maybe special "portable" apps. There is also metadata, such as configuration settings, that get stored in various places most people don't know how to find, let alone back up and then restore later. Even people who do find it's generally faster and easier to just reconfigure the settings if it becomes necessary to reinstall the OS.

All you can save are documents you create with programs like Word or maybe you download a PDF and save it. Those are the kinds of things you can save. The actual programs and configurations, not so much. Also, even assuming you only cared about documents, it's still not an excuse to fail having backups on a flash drive or some such. You're somewhat insulated from software issues, but it doesn't matter if you have data on another partition if the drive suffers a hardware failure. So generally there's so little to be gained from having some kind of specific partition just for data files that few people bother doing it. Just back things up onto a flash drive now and again and check that periodically as well for signs of failure. External HDDs have a very high rate of failure, so I wouldn't trust them as a primary means of storing anything you don't want to lose.

back up all your files to a external drive or if you have Skydrive , dropbox or any cloud storage. The if you have created the restore DVD's you can restore then copy the data back. No you will have to reinstall your applications ounce you reinstall windows.