Hard drive partitioning methods

[James D]

I am going to install a new hard drive and was wondering what the preferred
method of partitioning here is. I have been using FDisk/Disk Manager for
years and have always heard a lot about Partition Magic. Would it be better
to go that route? What happens if you decide to remove Partition Magic? My
guess is that you would lose all partitioning right?

 

[Malke]

I am going to install a new hard drive and was wondering what the
preferred method of partitioning here is. I have been using FDisk/Disk
Manager for years and have always heard a lot about Partition Magic.
Would it be better to go that route? What happens if you decide to
remove Partition Magic? My guess is that you would lose all
partitioning right?

It really depends on what you are going to do with the new hard drive.
If you are going to install XP on it, then do the partitioning with XP
at the beginning of the installation process. You can create partitions
then as desired.

If this is a slave drive that you are using for storage and you already
have XP on the master drive, you can still use your XP install disk or
use the utility from the drive mftr. that came with the drive to create
a partition. You can format the drive from within Windows itself using
disk management (Administrative Tools>Computer Management).

If you have Partition Magic, you can use it and no, if you uninstall PM
afterwards the partitions you created will not disappear. The work you
do with Partition Magic does not depend on the program being present on
the system; it's just a tool to do the work.

Malke

 

[Philip Herlihy]

I've not used Partition Magic, but I assume Acronis Disk Director is
similar. As I understand it, both are able to change partitioning of a disk
without losing the data on it (ADD certainly can). If you remove ADD the
partitioning is unchanged unless you've installed the "OS selector" facility
which allows you to choose between bootable partitions at boot time.

I tend to partition new machines with 20-30Gb for Windows and programs
(erring on giving more space rather than less) and 2Gb or more for data
(easier to relocate data than program files). I change the properties of
the "My Documents" link to point to the data partition (I might one day try
using a Junction Point to move the whole Documents and Settings folder
there). Then I image (eg Acronis True Image) the System partition and
Backup (eg ntbackup) the data partition.

But then, I am a fusspot...

 

[Yves Leclerc]

Partition Magic should only really be considered if you want to manage the
partitions (resize, move, merge) and you do not want to loose files. Once
you are done with managing the partitions, you can safely remove Partition
Magic. It does not un-do the changes done with it.

 

[Anna]

It really depends on what you are going to do with the new hard drive.
If you are going to install XP on it, then do the partitioning with XP
at the beginning of the installation process. You can create partitions
then as desired.

If this is a slave drive that you are using for storage and you already
have XP on the master drive, you can still use your XP install disk or
use the utility from the drive mftr. that came with the drive to create
a partition. You can format the drive from within Windows itself using
disk management (Administrative Tools>Computer Management).

If you have Partition Magic, you can use it and no, if you uninstall PM
afterwards the partitions you created will not disappear. The work you
do with Partition Magic does not depend on the program being present on
the system; it's just a tool to do the work.

Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User

James:
Although you didn't specifically say, I'm assuming that the drive you're
planning to install is destined as a secondary drive. Assuming that's so,
let me add the following to what Malke has stated...

You can, and in my opinion, should use the Disk Management utility in XP to
partition/format your drive. The DM utility is one of the strongest features
of XP and there is *no* reason *not* to use it for basic
partitioning/formatting of your hard drives. The process is simple &
straightforward and has the added virtue of speed. The utility is tightly
integrated within the XP OS environment and works very reliably.

To my mind there is no reason to use a third-party program when the XP
utility is available and will effectively do the job.

As Malke also indicated, if you're going to install XP on that drive, then
do your partitioning/formatting using the XP CD as you install the OS.
Again, it's a simple & straightforward process that should cause you no
problems.
Anna

 

[Guest]

It makes sense to me to use the tools that I'm going to be working the system
with (in this case - Windows XP) - and only move to other tools if the native
tools cannot do the job for you.

 

[Guest]

I'm really sorry to butt in on this discussion but it's the only one I could
find that relates to my problem so if I'm out of order please tell me to get
lost!

Firstly, I'm brand new to discussion gps. I've had a PC for years but only
recently had the time to try and do 'clever' things with it (I've recently
installed a combined CD/DVD RW ROM Drive ! Very pleased with myself !).

Anyway, my problem is this. I have a Gateway PC 450 Mhertz (1997) and it's
got about 8GB of hard drive. The problem is that this is split into 2
drives: one called 'Gateway C Local Disc 1.99GB' and one called 'Local Disc D
Local Disc 5.85GB'. It's never been too much of a problem in the past but
recently I've been getting messages that my hard drive is full. All ther
important/big stuff seems to be stored on the C Drive; Windows XP (loaded
recently). I tried to repartition the drives recently using the Windows XP
CD, cos someone told me I should, and only suceeded in deleting all the stuff
that was on the D Drive and didn't go any further in case I erased all my C
Drive as well ! What I'd like to do ideally is combine the two drives into
one if this is possible. Does any of this make sense ? I'm game to have a
go at anything and have the original Gateway System CD and Windows 98 and
Windows XP and wouldn't mind starting from scratch if necessary. Can anybody
offer any help or should I just go away ! Many thanks for your patience,
Vincent

 

[Philip Herlihy]

I wouldn't divide any disk with less than 10Gb, personally, for exactly the
reason you cite.

Try googling for "Treesize" from Jam software - a neat little utility which
can tell you where the space on C is really going.

Your options are (having backed up your data, including email and account
settings, etc, and checked you have all the necessary program CDs):

* Use FDISK to delete both partitions, then create one new one and reinstall
from scratch on that.

* Use a partitioning tool like Acronis Disk Director or BootItNG to extend
free space on the C drive at the expense of D. ADD is easy to use, but I
suspect the free trial won't let you "commit" the changes (from memory).
BootItNG looked much more complicated to me, but does have a free
fully-functional trial period. A novice could use ADD - doubt that's true
of BootItNG. If ADD's free trial will do this, that would be the simplest
option (but you need the space to install it - 40Mb or so).

* You could use an imaging tool to create a partition-level backup of C.
Then delete partitions using FDISK, reformat, and then restore the image to
the new C. Acronis True Image has a 15-day free trial which will definitely
do this for you (another fairly simple solution if you have space to install
it). If you have nowhere to store the backup (2Gb will compress a bit, but
allow 2Gb for safety) like an external HDD or DVD burner, you could delete D
with FDISK, then create and format a new 2Gb data partition "D". Then image
C to that, delete C with FDISK, create and format a new, bigger C, and
restore the image to that. ATI will also allow you to "clone" a disk if you
plan to install a larger one.