Partition hard drive

[creager]

Is there a way to partition a HD within Windows XP home itself, except when installing the orginal disk?

Do not have Partition Magic or any program like that.

[WhatsThisBoxFor?]

Right Click My Computer -> Manage Then Disk Management on the right hand side.

I do not think it will let you format the system drive, but other than that you can Format/Partition, Assign drive letters etc If the drive has data on make sure you rescue anything important since formatting wipes everything, but I think everything else will not destroy data (but be careful, I can't remember what everything is).

[creager]

Thanks What this box for,

Yes, I will be very careful. This is a old machine that I installed a new 40g drive in, reinstalled Windows XP and it put the OS in the drive ok. When the install got to the point of partitioning I could not really understand what to do, so just let it go. Thinking I could partition it later in Disk Manager. But now realize that is not correct. Guess I must reformat and start over, is that correct?

[WhatsThisBoxFor?]

If the current state is really a problem, then the only way to fix it is to reformat/repartition or pay for a program like partition magic (which doesn't always work). What is wrong with the current partitioning? I don't see any disadvantage to having one large partition, if that is the problem.

[creager]

What's this box For,

You are correct, rather than go through all the reinstall stuff plus it is a old machine a 450mb Dell and rather slow, just let it be. This is my first attempt at installing a OS so charge it to experience. That was the purpose in the first place. It was in the garage gathering dust.

Thanks for the help,
Bill

[Cricket]

Guess I must reformat and start over, is that correct?If you just made one big partition but want several smaller partitions, then yes you have to start over again.

When you do, remember to create a small first partition to install WinXP in. Then after that's done and WinXP is installed you can go into Disk Management and create partitions with the existing disk space.

How to partition and format a hard disk in Windows XP (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;313348)

How to use Disk Management to configure basic disks in Windows XP (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;309000)

:) Cricket

[creager]

Thank you Cricket,

I need to get off this think now and get back to my main computer.
Surely will get into your site suggestions tomorrow and post a report to you.

Bill

[Wolf_10]

If you just made one big partition but want several smaller partitions, then yes you have to start over again.

When you do, remember to create a small first partition to install WinXP in. Then after that's done and WinXP is installed you can go into Disk Management and create partitions with the existing disk space.

How to partition and format a hard disk in Windows XP (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;313348)

How to use Disk Management to configure basic disks in Windows XP (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;309000)

:) Cricket

Microsoft says "When you partition and format a hard disk, all the data on that partition is permanently deleted"

Is this really true? For example, If I boot up with my Win XP cd, and delete my current partition on my HDD, and even take it a step further and repartition, it seems to me there would be a way to access the data left on the HDD.

Could the repartitioned HDD be hooked up as a slave on another computer, and data be withdrawn from it? Would a hex editor be required to do this? What about data recovery software? And what ramifications does the deleted file system (NTFS, FAT, etc) have on recovering the data? Thanks for reading. :cool:

[glc]

Data recovery software may be able to recover it, as long as you don't write anything to the drive. This software usually doesn't come cheap.

[Wolf_10]

37,000+ posts! Nice to meet you. I am going to test this out. Data recovery software is anywhere from $30 to $3000.00, that I have seen so far. This fact is interesting in itself. I think you can get into some intense DR software for under $500.00. I wonder how effective the low-end software is. I will try to find out. It is nice to have extra computers laying around so I can break them and fix them. :)

I hope to get some good information to share here.

Peace

[glc]

There's one freebie you can try - http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/welcome.htm

The best pay software I've found is Ontrack Easy Recovery. They do offer a free trial, it will tell you what it can recover, but you have to pay to unlock it to do the actual recovery.