How to make a new partition?

[Guest]

I have preinstalled (XP Home) Fujitsu-Siemens with 250GB disk.
There is only one partition c: .
Now I want to split it, lets say, for two c: and d: .
How to do this without buying a partition program?

 

[Og]

I have preinstalled (XP Home) Fujitsu-Siemens with 250GB disk.
There is only one partition c: .
Now I want to split it, lets say, for two c: and d: .
How to do this without buying a partition program?

1. Windows does not support partitioning of the disk upon which it is
installed.
2. IF your new PC came with an actual Windows XP installation CD:
THEN boot from the CD, create and format partitions to your little
heart's desire
THEN install Windows wherever you want.
3. IF, however, your new PC came with a hidden, Restore Partition on the
existing drive
rather than an actual installation CD...
4. THEN your only options are:
a.) Use a third-party partitioning program.
b.) Buy a retail version of Windows, boot from that CD and
create/format partitions.
Steve

 

[Ayush]

Replied to [Jere Pee]s message :
-----------------------------------------------------------

I have preinstalled (XP Home) Fujitsu-Siemens with 250GB disk.
There is only one partition c: .
Now I want to split it, lets say, for two c: and d: .
How to do this without buying a partition program?

You can use the trial version of the software. When work is over, throw it away.

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Ayush

Which software?

--

Regards.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England

Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Replied to [Jere Pee]s message :
-----------------------------------------------------------

I have preinstalled (XP Home) Fujitsu-Siemens with 250GB disk.
There is only one partition c: .
Now I want to split it, lets say, for two c: and d: .
How to do this without buying a partition program?

You can use the trial version of the software. When work is over,
throw it away.

 

[Ayush]

Replied to [Gerry Cornell]s message :
-----------------------------------------------------------

Ayush

Which software?

He said about partitioning without buying a software, i said about trying a software,
so he can choose whatever e.g. the software he dont want to buy.

 

[Gordon]

Ayush

Which software?

BootIT NG is one that springs to mind as I've used the trial version.....
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Gordon

I looked earlier for Shareware and was not able to find one.

BootIT NG was available for a 30 day trial but I do not think that offer
is still available.

--

Regards.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England

Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Ayush

Do you know of any satisfactory shareware currently available? I was
unsuccessful when I looked.


--

Regards.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England

Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Replied to [Gerry Cornell]s message :
-----------------------------------------------------------

Ayush

Which software?

He said about partitioning without buying a software, i said about
trying a software, so he can choose whatever e.g. the software he dont
want to buy.

 

[Gordon]

Gordon

I looked earlier for Shareware and was not able to find one.

BootIT NG was available for a 30 day trial but I do not think that offer
is still available.

No, you can still use it in Trial-mode for 30 days. (Just dowmloaded and
looked at the Licence....)

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Gordon it seems you are right. I opened the license.txt file and there
is a provision for a 30 trial use. What an obscure way to provide
potential customers with important information.

--

Regards.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England

Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I have preinstalled (XP Home) Fujitsu-Siemens with 250GB disk.
There is only one partition c: .
Now I want to split it, lets say, for two c: and d: .
How to do this without buying a partition program?

You can *not* do this without a third-party program.

Unfortunately, no version of Windows provides any way of changing the
existing partition structure of the drive nondestructively. The only way to
do what you want is with third-party software. Partition Magic is the
best-known such program, but there are freeware/shareware alternatives. One
such program is BootIt Next Generation. It's shareware, but comes with a
free 30-day trial, so you should be able to do what you want within that 30
days. I haven't used it myself (because I've never needed to use *any* such
program), but it comes highly recommended by several other MVPs here.

Whatever software you use, make sure you have a good backup before
beginning. Although there's no reason to expect a problem, things *can* go
wrong.

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Ken

Searching this morning I found no freeware options!

--

Regards.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England

Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Bruce Chambers]

I have preinstalled (XP Home) Fujitsu-Siemens with 250GB disk.
There is only one partition c: .
Now I want to split it, lets say, for two c: and d: .
How to do this without buying a partition program?

There is no way to repartition it using native Windows tools
without deleting the existing partitions, and creating and formating new
partitions, and then reinstalling the OS and applications.

There are, fortunately, quite a few 3rd party products that can
help you repartition the hard drive non-destructively. Two such
products are Symantec's Partition Magic and BootItNG. The latter even
has a free, fully functional 30-day evaluation version available for
downloading from www.bootitng.com. Simply use one of them to resize the
system partition, and then create a second (extended) partition.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. -Bertrand Russell

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Gordon it seems you are right. I opened the license.txt file and there
is a provision for a 30 trial use. What an obscure way to provide
potential customers with important information.

They probably got tired of people downloading and using their free
trial version whenever needed or desired, but never buying it.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. -Bertrand Russell

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Searching this morning I found no freeware options!

I believe that Ranish Partition Manager at http://www.ranish.com/part/ is
freeware.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

Searching this morning I found no freeware options!

I've not gotten to try it - always wanted to play around with it...
http://www.ranish.com/part/

I might setup a stand-alone test machine again just to do it one of these
days.

 

[Chuck Davis]

For the life of me, I don't know the perceived advantages of partioning the
drive. I've read a lot of "reasons," but none made it throught my thick
skull. In those computers that arrive from the manufacturer with the OS in a
partition, I have found that that partition will eventually be too small and
cause problems.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

For the life of me, I don't know the perceived advantages of
partioning the drive. I've read a lot of "reasons," but none made
it throught my thick skull. In those computers that arrive from the
manufacturer with the OS in a partition, I have found that that
partition will eventually be too small and cause problems.

The *only* technical advantage that is hard to argue with is if you want to
store your DATA - nothing else - on the second partition.
The advantage? If you *have* to reinstall the OS and you know what you are
doing - at least your data stays intact - given the reason for the whole
mess is non-hardware related and whatever software issue that caused your
reinstall did not include deleting files from other drives. *grin*

As far as non-technical reasoning...

Organization. For some people it is simpler to think that all their
applications are installed on D. Their operating system is C. Their
picture files are E. Their word documents are F. Etc... Perception only -
but that goes a long way with human beings - after all - most things are
perception only when you get down to it.

Personally - I make one large partition and install the OS and all
applications.
I buy additional drive(s) and install them as needed - usually in a RAID
fashion.

As for the implication that the "...partition will eventually be too small
and cause problems..." <- not true. If I was to buy some people a computer
and put a 750GB drive in there and partition the C drive to be 250GB and D
to be 500GB (I know the numbers are not accurate - just go with the
theory) --> then most people (non-power users, people who use their system
for email, games, pictures, word processing, etc..) would not only NOT fill
up their C drive - but probably always be *not utilizing* a huge amount of
that space.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

The *only* technical advantage that is hard to argue with is if you
want to store your DATA - nothing else - on the second partition.
The advantage? If you *have* to reinstall the OS and you know what
you are doing - at least your data stays intact - given the reason
for the whole mess is non-hardware related and whatever software
issue that caused your reinstall did not include deleting files from
other drives. *grin*

Sorry to disagree, but I'll throw in a contrary opinion here, if I may:

I don't think that's a good reason for separating data on a separate
partition at all. To me, if your data is important to you, it always needs
to be backed up, and if it is backed up and you ever have to reinstall the
operating system, you simply restore the data from the backup, even if it's
not on a separate partition. In fact, I think that many people who do as you
suggest get a false sense of security from it and have that kind of
separation *instead* of a backup, thinking that it takes away the need for
a backup. In fact, that's not at all true of course, since things like a
hard drive crash (and other events) can easily destroy everything.

To me the best reason for keeping your data on a partition separate from the
operating system system is to facilitate data backup. If you back up only
data, rather than image the entire drive, with most backup programs, it's
easier to do it if the data is on a separate partition.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

For the life of me, I don't know the perceived advantages of
partioning the drive. I've read a lot of "reasons," but none made
it throught my thick skull. In those computers that arrive from
the manufacturer with the OS in a partition, I have found that
that partition will eventually be too small and cause problems.

The *only* technical advantage that is hard to argue with is if you
want to store your DATA - nothing else - on the second partition.
The advantage? If you *have* to reinstall the OS and you know what
you are doing - at least your data stays intact - given the reason
for the whole mess is non-hardware related and whatever software
issue that caused your reinstall did not include deleting files
from other drives. *grin*
As far as non-technical reasoning...

Organization. For some people it is simpler to think that all their
applications are installed on D. Their operating system is C. Their
picture files are E. Their word documents are F. Etc... Perception
only - but that goes a long way with human beings -
after all - most things are perception only when you get down to it.

Personally - I make one large partition and install the OS and all
applications.

I buy additional drive(s) and install them as needed - usually in a
RAID fashion.

<last example snipped>

Sorry to disagree, but I'll throw in a contrary opinion here, if I
may:
I don't think that's a good reason for separating data on a separate
partition at all. To me, if your data is important to you, it
always needs to be backed up, and if it is backed up and you ever
have to reinstall the operating system, you simply restore the data
from the backup, even if it's not on a separate partition. In fact,
I think that many people who do as you suggest get a false sense of
security from it and have that kind of separation *instead* of a
backup, thinking that it takes away the need for a backup. In fact,
that's not at all true of course, since things like a hard drive
crash (and other events) can easily destroy everything.
To me the best reason for keeping your data on a partition separate
from the operating system system is to facilitate data backup. If
you back up only data, rather than image the entire drive, with
most backup programs, it's easier to do it if the data is on a
separate partition.

I am unsure where we disagreed. You expanded on the only technical reason I
could come up with for partitioning - you did not disagree with it per se.
I never mentioned backup here - but it was not because I felt it should not
be a matter of concern; perhaps I left too much to assumption there. Matter
of fact the very reason I added the last part of the last sentence:

"... given the reason for the whole mess is non-hardware related and
whatever software issue that caused your reinstall did not include deleting
files from other drives. *grin* ..." implies that said method is *not*
foolproof nor should be relied upon.

While I appreciate the additional information you have added (which may
prevent misunderstanding in the future on said topic) - I do not see as we
had any disagreement here. You just took my explanation to the next level -
backing up data - which should always be in place, partitioning or not.

I never quoted this as a suggestion and was careful to point out, "...you
know what you are doing..." and "...the reason for the whole mess is
non-hardware related and whatever software issue that caused your reinstall
did not include deleting files from other drives..." in the explanation. My
response was to 'Chuck Davis' to help explain why someone might believe it
better to partition their drive. I have seen too many falsehoods on these
message boards such as 'better performance' and 'no data loss if something
goes wrong' without further explanatin that if the something that goes wrong
is hard disk drive failure - that can effect all partitions on the physical
drive to know better than not to include such things. As I stated - I don't
do much partitioning on my personal machines. Now - where I managed dozens
of groups and each one has a different data retention need - yeah -
partitioning is king. *grin*