Partitioning

[Guest]

I am trying to re-partition my hard drive but I can find no option other than
delete the current partition (the HD is currently one, basic, partition).
Can Disk Management do partitioning on-the-fly? or must I actually delete
the current partition and start over again? and, if it can partition
on-the-fly, how do I do it?

 

[Malke]

I am trying to re-partition my hard drive but I can find no option
other than delete the current partition (the HD is currently one,
basic, partition).
Can Disk Management do partitioning on-the-fly? or must I actually
delete
the current partition and start over again? and, if it can partition
on-the-fly, how do I do it?

You need third-party partitioning software for non-destructive
partitioning, something like Acronis Disk Director, Partition Magic, or
BootIT NG.

Malke

 

[Yves Leclerc]

NO, Disk Management does not allow you to partition on the "fly." You need to
look at third party utilities like Partition Magic.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I am trying to re-partition my hard drive but I can find no option
other than delete the current partition (the HD is currently one,
basic, partition). Can Disk Management do partitioning on-the-fly?
or must I actually delete the current partition and start over again?
and, if it can partition on-the-fly, how do I do it?

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.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

I am trying to re-partition my hard drive but I can find no option other than
delete the current partition (the HD is currently one, basic, partition).

Correct. That's all that's possible with WinXP's native tools.

Can Disk Management do partitioning on-the-fly?

No.


or must I actually delete
the current partition and start over again?

Either that, or acquire and use a 3rd party partitioning utility.



--

Bruce Chambers

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[P. Johnson]

Can Disk Management do partitioning on-the-fly?

Yes, except no operating system can repartition the drive it's running from
while it's running from it (in Windows, this is C.

or must I actually delete the current partition and start over again?

Not necessarily. You're still going to need to back up your important data
first (since partitioning is inherently dangerous to data), then try out
Partition Magic. Or if you don't feel like shelling out the big bucks to
Symantec for something you're not going to use that much, look into
QTParted (http://qtparted.sourceforge.net/) on the bootable Knoppix CD
(http://knoppix.net/). If all goes well with either of these tools, you
can reconfigure your partitions without losing data.