New partition on same drive?

[Mark G.]

I have a 250gig hard drive that still has about 120 gigs of free space
available. This is just one of my 'data' drives as I have 4 other hard
drives on my computer as well. Anyhow, I need to emulate a network drive
from work. Meaning, that I need to make a drive labeled "U:" and allocate
some space to it. Maybe 10 gigs. Long reason why I need to go about it this
way, but moreorless has to do with the way some software I use at work and
at home sets up pathing for files and projects. Anyhow, I check through the
administrative tools> disk management and for the life of me, can not
remember how to achieve this simple task. End result, I want to take about
10 gigs from this 250 gig drive and create another logical/primary
drive/partition on my computer. How do I need to go about this logically
without causing any future issues and/or errors? Thanks much for your
thoughtful input.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I have a 250gig hard drive that still has about 120 gigs of free space
available. This is just one of my 'data' drives as I have 4 other hard
drives on my computer as well. Anyhow, I need to emulate a network drive
from work. Meaning, that I need to make a drive labeled "U:" and allocate
some space to it. Maybe 10 gigs. Long reason why I need to go about it this
way, but moreorless has to do with the way some software I use at work and
at home sets up pathing for files and projects. Anyhow, I check through the
administrative tools> disk management and for the life of me, can not
remember how to achieve this simple task. End result, I want to take about
10 gigs from this 250 gig drive and create another logical/primary
drive/partition on my computer. How do I need to go about this logically
without causing any future issues and/or errors? Thanks much for your
thoughtful input.

Windows XP has no facilities to resize existing partitions. You have to
use a third-party partition manager such as Acronis Disk Director.

 

[Ron Badour]

You will need a partitioning program to do this. BootIt Next Generation is
available from: http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html and it does
partitioning, makes a compressed image, does many other partitioning chores
and is a boot manager. It is not quite as easy to use as Partition Magic
but it is half the cost and has more features. Unlike the crippled PMagic
demo, BING is a *full function* demo you can try for FREE for 30 days. The
web site has a lot of support articles.

 

[philo]

I have a 250gig hard drive that still has about 120 gigs of free space
available. This is just one of my 'data' drives as I have 4 other hard
drives on my computer as well. Anyhow, I need to emulate a network drive
from work. Meaning, that I need to make a drive labeled "U:" and allocate
some space to it. Maybe 10 gigs. Long reason why I need to go about it this
way, but moreorless has to do with the way some software I use at work and
at home sets up pathing for files and projects. Anyhow, I check through the
administrative tools> disk management and for the life of me, can not
remember how to achieve this simple task. End result, I want to take about
10 gigs from this 250 gig drive and create another logical/primary
drive/partition on my computer. How do I need to go about this logically
without causing any future issues and/or errors? Thanks much for your
thoughtful input.

You were given correct info by the other respondents...but I'd like to add :

If you do not want to purchase 3rd party software...
why not use one of your other drives?

You could either re-assign the drive letter to "U"
Or move the data off one drive...then delete it and re-partition it using
disk management.

 

[Ron Badour]

To clarify: No need to purchase Boot It as it is free to use for 30 days.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Anyhow, I check through the
administrative tools> disk management and for the life of me, can not
remember how to achieve this simple task. End result, I want to take about
10 gigs from this 250 gig drive and create another logical/primary
drive/partition on my computer. How do I need to go about this logically
without causing any future issues and/or errors?

Unfortunately, no version of Windows before Vista 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]

But a good tool to have around for managing drives Ron. Good value for
money.

--
Regards.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
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