Aqua-Soft ForumsHey all. I've got an 160GB HD that I want to split up into a few smaller partitions for music, games and so on. I already have a Recovery partition set up, but we'll ignore that. I'm a complete novice at partitioning and such as I've never really needed to do it before. How would I go about setting up these partitions and what programs should I use? Thanks ;D
Partitioning Help
Partition Magic and you can't do wrong 
I'll give it a look lil' Unbe man. I've heard stuff about 'destructive partitioning' where it can destroy your existing data when it creates partitions and stuff. Is that a problem or am I talking jibba jabba here?
EDIT: Hrrrm, Partition Magic isn't all that easy to use. I'm trying to Create a Partition but it won't let me make it any bigger than a certain size (7.4GB in this instance) for some reason. Anyone? ;(
when it comes to this topic, I have alwyas used a WIN2K cd and did it from a pertision & format...
if you can learn dos, it is just basic such as there are only so many comands that you can perform at that state.
http://www.pcguide.com/proc/setup/hdd-c.html
you can use a Win2K install CD for this
Dude, don't take chances. Partition Magic is the way to go. It's expensive - yes - but it works. And it allows you to reconfigure any way you like down the road.
Personally I just use GParted with a Ubuntu Live CD. It's free and works great for me!
Hooo boy, it's gonna be a long weekend. OK, so I've got PartitionMagic up and running, and it looks simple enough. This is the window it brings up:
All looking good there. So I go ahead and click 'Create a New Partition', follow all the "reccomended" steps and I end up at this screen:
It won't let me create a partition bigger or smaller than 7.4GB - what's that all about? :confused:
I'm pretty sure hitting Create A New Partition was the right option (seems logical enough), but perhaps it wasn't. Any ideas? Much appreciated folks ;D
You mean a mere 7.4 MB? Yeah, that's odd...and it most certainly shouldn't.
Anybody know what is wrong, assuming it is not a warez-thing?
Hmmm, looking more closely, there's an "Unallocated" bit in the first screenshot. Perhaps I'm doing this the wrong way - anyone with any more experience in Partition Magic know what I'm should be doing?
To be honest, if you just want partitions for Music, Data, Games etc, it is not really worth it.
There are things called folders for this.
Even tho your data is on different partitions, if the hard drive fails you still have no backups. Much better to have a separate hard drive for your data, cheaper per Gb than they've ever been and much more worth it than purchasing Partition Software.
If u must insist on using partitions, then yes, i would recommend Partition Magic. Read the guides carefully to make sure you haven't missed anything. Having only 7.4 mb available is very strange. Have you tried defragging your hard drive beforehand?
PS. If you are planning on Mulitple Operating systems using the partitions then I recommend Acronis Boot Manager.
How to use free partition included in Windows !!!
http://www.informationweek.com/LP/showArti...80207718&pgno=1
you may have what's called an "extended x" partition, though I'm not sure. (I think that's what the pink border signifies.) if that's the case, you have to delete or remove all files on that extended partition, and then delete that partition, before you can alter your configuration successfully. Look at the properties for ech of the three partitions identified in the first screen shot above to find out if one of them is an extended partition.
simon seeing as you've already allocated 150gb to the main drive C: the first thing you want to do is to resize the partition
then use the unallocated space to make your extended partition, within which you can make logical partitions.
its because its generally safer to use 1 primary + 1 extended (in which you make all your other partitions) rather than have the maximum allowed 4 primary partitions
btw it says you've used 140 of the 150gb - you might wanna move that stuff someplace else before resizing
That makes sense thehundredthone, I'll give it a shot and see what happens. Also, knowing my luck, I probably do vitasg; I'll investigate that too. Thanks for your help folks *tips hat*
just a tip:
only use partition magic on completely blank hard drives.
I used it to adjust some sizes once and ended up losing about 200GB of data.
however for a blank hard drive it should serve you just as well as the partition tool that comes with on the windows CD, which is what I use, since the only time I partition is when I install windows.