Need to partion 120GB Harddrive

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Tech

I just currently bought a 120GB harddrive and i made a
mistake of making it just one drive. Was that good? If
its not good, whats the best way to partion it while
keeping all my OS and files?
 
Hi,

You need 3rd party software for partition, such as
Partition Magic 8.0 from Power Quest.

Peter
 
I just currently bought a 120GB harddrive and i made a
mistake of making it just one drive. Was that good? If
its not good, whats the best way to partion it while
keeping all my OS and files?
Click to expand...

There are good arguments for partitioning, but you don't have to.
Some people like to keep their O/S in one partition, programs in
another, and data in another. That way, you can do an image backup of
the data partition without wasting space backing up unnecessary progs
and O/S. Others like the simplicity of having one drive. It used to
be desirable to partition with FAT32 and W98 to avoid wasting space
with lots of small files making inefficient use of available space,
but with XP and NTFS it's really your choice.

You can keep everything and still partition if you use a 3rd party
program like Partition Magic. There are others around and I think
there are some free ones, but I prefer and use PM8 for XP. I changed
my partitioning 3 or 4 times until I was happy. Do a defrag first,
backup everything as a safety precaution, then use PM to create your
new partitions. It then becomes something of a black art if you want
to move stuff to the new partitions, particularly things like My Docs:
you have to make sure your registry points to the new locations. MS
Powertoys TweakUI XP can help with this (go to TweakUI/My
Computer/Special Folders).

I have my primary NTFS drive with 3 partitions: Boot C:, Data D:, and
Misc E:. Boot has the O/S and programs, D has all my data folders,
including My Docs, Misc I use for CD Burning, editing large videos,
and some short-term backups.

With 120G you need to give some consideration to backup, if you don't
want to risk losing a lot of stuff.

I have a second FAT32 HDD with 2 partitions: one for Archives -
downloaded program installation files and updates, and the other for
backups - Ghost image backups of C and D and MS Backup incremental
daily backups of D:. I also backup my primary HDD to CDROM once a
month, and keep that backup at another site - but I guess I'm
paranoid. I have this second HDD as FAT32 so I can access it easily
from DOS if I can't boot Windows and my primary NTFS drive is
inaccessible. I said I was paranoid.
 
I don't know that I would call it a mistake... it's you own particuarl
preferences that you need to look at.

My main PC runs 3 hard drives, only 1 is partitioned. The c:\ drive is the
200gb one, partitioned into 2... one partition of 20gb for ONLY the
operating system and folders/files that must be installed on the c:\ drive.
The other 180gb (or thereabouts) is left as a single partition for video
files.

Second drive is 120gb, again a single partition, for other programs and
documents.

Third drive is 80gb, for anything else... mainly websites and a backup file.

If you have already put your data on the drive, then you must use third
party software to re-partition it and keep the data intact. If you don't
mind reinstalling everything, then just boot from the XP CD, and tell it you
want to delete the existing partition, repartition as you wish and then
reformat.

Cari
www.coribright.com
 
You may want to take the time to learn the terminology
associated with computers, before you ask a question that
makes you look like a "DUMB ASS"!

It's PARTITION, not partion!
 
You may want to take the time to learn the terminology
associated with computers, before you ask a question that
makes you look like a "DUMB ASS"!

It's PARTITION, not partion!
Click to expand...
And everyone else but you understood what he meant...
 
Tech said:
I just currently bought a 120GB harddrive and i made a
mistake of making it just one drive. Was that good? If
its not good, whats the best way to partion it while
keeping all my OS and files?
Click to expand...

I would certainly have split it. That now would need third party
software - Partition Magic 8.0 or BootIT NG, from
http://www.BootitNG.com ($35 shareware - 30 day full functional trial)

For a friend with such a size disk I set it up as 16GB for C (system and
programs) about 8 in reserve to stash a backup compressed image of C
(not seen by windows) and the rest as a data drive

Good general discussion at http://aumha.org/win5/a/parts.htm
 
Hello

Having one partition is always good which gives you less
letters to deal with, just about every pc I have I have never
partitioned any drive, but in the end that's your call to make.

Also you can partition the drive with out going out to spend
money on something that you really don't need to use, if I were
you one partition is good enough

How to Enable 48-bit Logical Block Addressing Support for ATAPI
Disk
Drives in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;303013

Alvin
 
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