Partition Hard Drive

[Guest]

I have Windows Utimate and a 160 GB Hard Drive. I would like to partition it
into two sections. I read how to shrink the "C" volume. I would like the
"C" to be 100 GB and the new partition 60 GB. If I shrink the "C" to 100 GB
first will all of my data still be there? Second how do I get the 60 GB to
be another partition? I don't want to lose any data trying to do this.
Thanks for the help.

 

[David B.]

Your data will be there provided nothing goes wrong with the process, have a
recent backup before you do it.
You create a new partition after the resize is finished and format it.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the reply. I think I will get Ghost to copy everything to my
external HD first. Just in case something does go wrong at least I won't
have to install all my programs again.

 

[Richard Urban]

Forget Ghost, and all the extra Norton/Symantec crap that gets installed
along with it.

TrueImage HOME 11.0 (build 8027) is the way to go. And it won't cripple your
system like Symantec products do.

--

Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, onemulligan.

Disk Management is the tool for this. There are several ways to find it.
Probably the easiest is to click Start, then type diskmgmt.msc into the
search box, then press Enter.

First, right-click on Drive C: in the Graphical View and shrink it by 60 GB.
This will work unless there are some unmovable files in the top 60 GB of the
partition. It should happen near-instantaneously and leave you with 60 GB
of Free Space following Drive C:.

Then right-click in that Free Space and choose New Simple Volume... and
follow the prompts. It's very easy and doesn't take long if you choose the
quick format. Be sure to give the new partition a name, which will get
written to the hard drive and won't change even if you decide the new
partition should be Drive X: instead of whatever DM wants to assign it by
default.

While you are here, right-click Drive C:, choose Properties, and type in a
meaningful name for it, too. Drive letters sometimes get shuffled, and you
need permanent reference for each of your "drives", which really are only
portions of the physical drive.

And, as the others said, "backup" is always A Good Thing when working with
projects like this.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail beta 2 in Vista Ultimate x64 SP1 beta v.275)

 

[Guest]

Thank you so much for all of the instructions. I copied them and will give
it a try tomorrow morning. I really appreciate the details on how to do
this. I should have done it before doing the install of Windows Ultimate but
hopefully it will work now.
(will let you know how it went tomorrow)

 

[Guest]

I followed your instructions and I now have a Local Disk C that says 112GB
free of 148GB. I gave the new partition the drive letter M and it shows 48.4
MB free of 59.9 but when I open it there is no data. Also, I lost my CD-RW
and DVD drives. When I go to control panel there is an exclamation mark next
to each drive. I uninstalled them, rebooted and still have an error. Hope
you can help me fix this. Thank you

 

[Richard Urban]

You DID create the backup we mentioned to you earlier in this post -
correct. Use the backup to go back to where you were before you started and
try again. That is what TrueImage is for.

--

Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

 

[Guest]

Hi, Just thought I would post an update. I called Microsoft since I was
still within the time frame for support. I gave them access to my computer.
First the tech went to the registry and deleted two items and I had my CD and
DVD drives back. The she removed the 60MB partition that I had created. I
found it interesting that to do this, and then make a new 60 GB partition,
she had to go to a command prompt to make it work. Interesting that the
choice when doing a new partition in the Administrator section comes up in MB
not GB. I didn't realize that, and you have to know the math to do the
conversion. Everything is fine now but I would NOT recommend trying to do
this using Vista Ultimate.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, onemulligan.

Thanks for the report back, and I'm glad you got it configured the way you
want it.

First the tech went to the registry and deleted two items and I had my CD
and
DVD drives back.

Must have been the upper and lower filters that I've heard so much about in
these newsgroups. Never had to do it myself, but I've seen it discussed
many times.

choice when doing a new partition in the Administrator section comes up in
MB
not GB. I didn't realize that, and you have to know the math to do the
conversion.

Oh, yeah. That happened to me a couple of years ago, the first time I used
the Extend command from DiskPart.exe. I wanted to Extend my partition by 2
GB, so I put in "2" - and got the full 5 GB that was available (disks were
much smaller in those days). THEN I read the instructions more closely.
Since "2 MB" was an invalid number, the program defaulted to the maximum
available. As it turned out, I was glad to have the full extension.
Several months later, I did the same thing, including the same error on my
part, with the same result. :>(

The math is easy, though, especially if you are happy with "approximately":
60,000 MB is approximately 60 GB. Vista will allocate full clusters,
anyhow, so the actual size will rarely be a round decimal number.

Before Vista, DiskPart.exe, started from a Command Prompt, was the only way
to have Windows Shrink or Extend a partition, and it still is a very
powerful tool (which also means that it can be dangerous, of course) that
can do a few things that can't be done from the GUI.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail beta 2 in Vista Ultimate x64 SP1 beta v.275)