Partitioning an un-partitioned HD

[chssvl]

Yes, before I get lectured on why I should have done this back when I bought the HDD and not now, let me tell you that many people told me to do so and I didn't and now I'm facing the consequences.

Having said that, I have an unpartitioned 120GB Maxtor HDD (IDE). I think that the unavoidable is comming and I'll have to reinstall everything all over again (almost 2 years since the last time I did so). However, "my documents" is now over 30GB and I'm not too keen on doing a complete backup all over again (although I do have partial backups). My question. Could I create a new partition (some 35-40GB) on the HDD free disk space without having to format the whole HDD. As always, thanks a lot

[flawedreality5]

Sure, but you'll need to buy a program to do it. I don't have it, but people always recommend say Partion Magic is great. When you make a new partition, you can move your files onto there. Then when installing Windows again, you can reformat the original C: partition and move your files back.

[glc]

Open up Disk Management. If the drive shows unallocated space, you can right click on it and create a partition in it without affecting the active partition. If the whole drive is already allocated, the only way to shrink the active partition nondestructively is with 3rd party software such as Partition Magic.

Either way, once the new partition is set and formatted and assigned a drive letter, you can right click on My Documents and move it lock stock and barrel to the new location and all programs that are registered to use it will still be able to find it. When you reinstall Windows on C, you will have to do the same thing *without* an overwrite so it's reregistered in the right place.

[chssvl]

Sorry for the delay answering but I didn't get any e-mail notifications. Anyway, I have Partition Magic 8 now but I'm waiting to free up some space on my HDD before making the partitions. Any recommendations before I partition the HDD besides defragmenting beforehand? Thanks!

[Panama Red]

Make sure you make the PM8 back up disks when offered the option. If something goes wrong, you can then restore. If you don't, all is lost.