disk partitioning

Replies

• 

  AshNZ

  You can follow this advice taken from #-Link-Snipped-#
  
  

  [FONT=Arial,Helvetica]How to Partition Your Hard Drive
  [/FONT]
  Users with complicated hard-drive configurations, RAID arrays, or the Windows XP operating system will likely need more-powerful partitioning software than #-Link-Snipped-#'s Disk Management tool--#-Link-Snipped-# is a good place to start.
  First, back up your data. The partitioning process shouldn't delete any data, but you can't be too careful when working with your hard drive.
  
  Open the Disk Management tool by slecting Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management. An entry for Disk Management should show up underneath the Storage heading on the left-hand side.
  
  Click Disk Management, and you should see a list of your existing drives and partitions (if applicable). To create a new partition, choose a disk that has free storage space, right-click it, and select Shrink Volume. Bear in mind that you can safely shrink only basic disks; if you try to shrink dynamic disks (such as RAID arrays) that are formatted with the NTFS file system, you'll risk losing your data.
  
  Type in the amount of space you want to shrink the disk by. The number you choose depends on what you want to use the other partition for. If you plan to dual-boot another version of Windows, for example, you'll want a lot of space (Windows 7 requires at least 16GB of available space, for example); but if you're setting aside room for an emergency recovery partition, you won't need nearly as much space.
  
  If you plan to install an OS in this partition (Windows or otherwise), you'll probably have to stop here--your operating system installer will likely insist on making the partition itself during the installation process.
  
  Once you've cleared the necessary space, it should show up in the Disk Management window as Unallocated Space. Right-click this entry, select New Simple Volume, and let the resulting wizard guide you through the remaiing steps of the process. Generally, you'll want to format the new partition as NTFS; and unless you're using this partition for archiving purposes, you won't need to enable file and folder compression for the whole drive. (If you decide to enable compression later, you can do it easily enough: In the Disk Management tool, right-click the partition and select Properties, Compress this drive to save space.)

  If you are partitioning to dual boot for seperate Windows or Linux, you should be able to partition using the installation disk..
  
  For third party tools you can use #-Link-Snipped-# which has quite a lot of partition tools. You can use #-Link-Snipped-#
• 

  krunal_p

  The best tool is to use GParted.
  
  It is free and Open Source.
  
  #-Link-Snipped-#
• 

  vik001ind

  Shirking of the harddisk don't work always, if your harddisk is fragmented & contain too many page files or the hard disk size is less than some value (say 20gb), then shrinking will not occur.
  In such case use softwares like hiren boot cd & Gparted boot cd , I prefer Gparted.
• 

  callyD

  I second Gparted, for more information on what GParted can do for you, check their documentation page - #-Link-Snipped-#
• 

  Prasad Ajinkya

  I would have suggested Gparted if money was the deciding point, but I prefer Partition Magic to gparted, in terms of usability and outcome.
• 

  Ashraf HZ

  I also recommend GParted for partitioning. However, regardless of what partition software you choose, make sure you defragment the hard disk. Choose the option to pack all files to the beginning of the drive so you wont orphan any important files when you perform the partition 😀