How to create a partition

  • Thread starter Thread starter Killian
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Killian

I have a single HP computer about 3 years old pre-installed with Windows XP
and later updated with SP2.
In my Microsoft management console under Disk management is a link to how to
"create a partition or logical drive" and this tells me how to create a
partition. Somehow the instructions do not work in my HP computer and I am
unable to get to the new partition wizard.
Can someone please advise how to create a partition or where I may be able
to get the information.
 
Try run,type:diskmgmt.msc In msc,R.click on the free space of any hd thats
listed,if any exist,the option would show to create one.If youre hd is
already
completly formatted,it wont be possible.Having a slave hd is usually a good
place to run the partition wizard as C: is usually full...Also,3rd party
software
can create another partition on any hd,even if C: is the only one running.
 
Killian said:
I have a single HP computer about 3 years old pre-installed with Windows XP
and later updated with SP2.
In my Microsoft management console under Disk management is a link to how
to "create a partition or logical drive" and this tells me how to create a
partition. Somehow the instructions do not work in my HP computer and I
am unable to get to the new partition wizard.
Can someone please advise how to create a partition or where I may be able
to get the information.
Click to expand...

Where exactly were you thinking of creating this new partition? Are you
adding a drive?

If not, it's likely that there is nowhere to create a partition on your
system.

And the tools that come with XP will allow you to create partitions in only
circumstance - right after you've deleted an exisitng one (unless you add
another disk).

The XP tools only allow partition creation on a disk that has space for a
new partition. You can't change the size of an existing partition without
deleting it and re-creating it a different size.

Some 3rd party tools allow for dynamic resizing of partitions, but if you
use one of these, make a copy of all your data *first*, and to another disk.
It's possible for the process to fail.

However, they too cannot create space where there isn't any.

If you added a disk and it's not showing in the disk management, recheck its
jumper settings. That is a common reason for undetected disks.

HTH
-pk
 
Thanks for the replies, I had already gone there without result. Faded links
only.
I'll go for the slave HD and 3rd party software in due course.
 
Killian said:
I have a single HP computer about 3 years old pre-installed with
Windows XP and later updated with SP2.
In my Microsoft management console under Disk management is a link to
how to "create a partition or logical drive" and this tells me how to
create a partition. Somehow the instructions do not work in my HP
computer and I am unable to get to the new partition wizard.
Can someone please advise how to create a partition or where I may be
able to get the information.
Click to expand...


The instructions are terribly misleading and next to useless.

The problem is that they tell you how to create a partition from
unpartitioned space. But almost *nobody* has unpartitioned space on his
drive. Having unpartitioned space is like having a four-bedroom house, but
only knowing about and using two of the bedrooms.

Unfortunately, Windows can only create partitions in unpartitioned space.
Assuming that you have no unpartitioned space (again, almost nobody does),
what you want to do is not to *create* a partition, but to change the
existing partition structure from a single partition to two partitions.

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.
 
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