Tom's Hardware > Forum > Storage > General Storage > Problems with partitioning SEAGATE 320GB into 8 partitions

Problems with partitioning SEAGATE 320GB into 8 partitions

Forum Storage : General Storage - Problems with partitioning SEAGATE 320GB into 8 partitions

Tom's Hardware: Over 1.4 million members in 6 different countries available to answer all your high-tech questions. Sign up now! Its free!

Ask the community Add a reply

Bottom Search this thread

Hi, everybody! I am newbie here, I searched around the forum and still cannot find out my problems!

I just got a new computer with the hard disk SEAGATE 320GB, SATA 7200rpm. The existed partition is 10GB for WinXP and two others are 150GB for each. I boot the computer with Hiren Boot 8.7 and use Paragon Partition to resize those partitions. I can only resize and create 1 more partition 70GB. When I resize the other 70GB, all the button greyed out and I cannot do anything, it is marked unallocated and I cannot intervene anything into this partition ???

I log in into Windows and use Partition Magic Pro 8.0 to tamp into the disk but the result is the same, what happened ??? What can I do ???

Can I divide my single disk into 8 partitions, 40GB each. I want to install Windows VISTA and Linux on other partitions.

I really appreciate your help.

Thanks.

Jackie Win.

Add a reply

Quote :

Jackie,, #1. Use Fdisk to get rid of everything on the hdd ..
OR #2,Go to seagate's site and dn'load the tools to 0/Clean the whole hdd,,AND then start Clean with what you want/need to do,,??

Reply to dokk

Seriously u can't create new partition on the above mentioned unallocated space?

Reply to aBg_rOnGak

I love that saying in your sig. Makes me laugh every time I see it.

Reply to Maxdad007

You are limited to 4 primary partitions.

You could, though, read a little bit of the Gentoo Linux installation guide and then download their "Minimal" cd and use their "fdisk" to create your partitions using primary, secondary, and logical volume partitions.

Reply to eRazor

Why am I limited to 4 partitions only ????

SEAGATE provide us the big-volume disk and now we are limited to only four partitions. If I knew this problem before, I have purchased 2 x 160 GB hard disk and set RAID for them, it will be faster, right ???

Dear all brothers, is there any other option or any other 3rd party application that I can re-partition the disk rather than erase them all and fdisk it.

Really appreciate your help.

Reply to jackiewin

Razor hit it.

You just need to make that 4th partition the rest of the drive and a secondary. Then you can sub divide it into as many logical partitions you want.

As far as I know you can only boot from a primary partition though.

Reply to KTev

Whoa! Don't shoot the messenger.

Read my reply again.

I said "You are limited to 4 primary partitions".

I also suggested that you read the disk partitioning section of the Gentoo Linux install guide and then use their "fdisk" to partition the drive.

You could create a primary partition for XP, a primary partition for Vista, a primary partition for Linux, and a crapload of extended and logical partitions.

It is nicely documented here.

The linux fdisk will not fsck with any of your current partitions. Some others will trash FAT's and MFT's when any new partition data is written to the disk. It's by far the safest way to do it.

I'm sure that Partition Magic can do it as well. I believe that the XP Disk Management tool can also create extended partitons, but unfortunately I don't have a spare disk to test on.

Reply to eRazor

The quote is from Bill Connolly.

And to the OP, getting a bootable Linux CD such as Knoppix and running Qtparted or GParted is advisable.

You want to boot Vista, Linux, and XP, so here's what I'd recommend your layout to be:

Partition Bootable? Type Size Partition type Use
/dev/sda1 Yes Primary 40GB HPFS/NTFS XP
/dev/sda2 No Primary 40GB HPFS/NTFS Vista
/dev/sda3 No Extended 160 GB <none>
/dev/sda5 No Extended 2GB Linux swap Linux swap
/dev/sda6 No Extended 38 GB (a Linux FS) Linux #1
/dev/sda7 No Extended 40 GB (a Linux FS) Linux #2

QTparted and GParted are excellent GUI-based partitioning tools and you can accomplish this with them. Select your HDD in the partitioner and then delete all partitions. Then create a partition map like this one, with /dev/sda3 extending from 80 GB to the end of the disk and sda5, sda6, and sda7 enclosed inside of it. You can even make filesystems on the partitions if you want to.

Reply to MU_Engineer

well the purpose of one large fast drive is not to reverse engineer it and make it small. While you're purpose of installing multiple OS's on seperate partitions is a noble one, you're just begging for trouble with such a setup, IMO. Doesn't mean you can't do it, but after all the headaches you will have if something goes wrong, you'll ask yourself why the heck you ever decided to do it this way.

A much better option would be to buy several small drives and install the OS's of your choice on their own harddrive. That way if the drive goes out you won't lose your mind and all your suitcases too.

But do what you want, I know absolutely nothing. :roll:

Reply to pip_seeker

I'm guessing that should have been a reply to jackiewin. I just supplied and answer to the question

Reply to eRazor

Either use partition magic 8 or go with a full re-install and create your os partition first.Then,use disk management in windows to create the rest of the partitions.This way you can make them whatever size you want and hence,any number you want.I would however,limit the number of os's you install to no more than 3.Otherwise,as others have said,you'll encounter all kinds of problems.Goodluck.P.S. I would personally just go with the full re-install as it is the surest way of getting it done the way you want.

Dahak

AMD X2-4400+@2.644 S-939
EVGA NF4 SLI MB
2X EVGA 7800GT IN SLI
2X1GIG DDR IN DC MODE
WD300GIG HD
EXTREME 19IN.MONITOR 1280X1024
THERMALTAKE TOUGHPOWER 850WATT PSU
COOLERMASTER MINI R120

Reply to Dahak

Thanks very much for all your help. I will try to use Partition Magic to set 3 primary partitions only and the rest will be secondary.

Any good news will let brothers know soon.

Reply to jackiewin

Quote :

Partition Bootable? Type Size Partition type Use
/dev/sda1 Yes Primary 40GB HPFS/NTFS XP
/dev/sda2 No Primary 40GB HPFS/NTFS Vista
/dev/sda3 No Extended 160 GB <none>
/dev/sda5 No Extended 2GB Linux swap Linux swap
/dev/sda6 No Extended 38 GB (a Linux FS) Linux #1
/dev/sda7 No Extended 40 GB (a Linux FS) Linux #2

Just a note:
I have XP installed on extended partition now 8O . 8)
1 _______________fat32
2 swap___________fat32
3 temp___________fat32
4 SECONDARY PARTITION (AKA EXTENDED)
---5 LINUX ___________EXT3
---6 LINUX ___________REISERFS4
---7 LINUX ___________SWAP
---8 XP______________NTFS
---9 PROGRAM FILES __NTFS
---10________________NTFS
---11________________NTFS

Reply to killmess

Maybe XP changed that from Win2K. I could not get Win2K to install on anything but a primary partition.

Reply to MU_Engineer

Ask the community Add a reply

Tom's Hardware > Forum > Storage > General Storage > Problems with partitioning SEAGATE 320GB into 8 partitions

Go to:

Help |
Forum rules

There are 1235 identified and unidentified users. To see the list of identified users, Click here.

Page generated in 0.800 seconds

Please mind

You are about to answer a thread that has been inactive for more than 6 months.
If you still wish to proceed, please ensure that your posting is original and does not duplicate or overlap any prior responses to this thread.

Add a reply Cancel

Focus On

Problems with partitioning SEAGATE 320GB into 8 partitions

Forum Storage : General Storage - Problems with partitioning SEAGATE 320GB into 8 partitions

Please mind