Will modifying a partition effect others?

[ED_GE]

Hey ppl,I want to install xp and Windows 7 dual boot on my PC and as this warrants two different partitions for both the OS separately.
I intend to delete the C: partiton and instead create two partitions.But I cant risk Data on other partitions on the drive, so if any1 can throw some light on this that will this effect other partitions.Thanks.

 

[tomatthe]

If you are going to mess with partitions on a drive you need to backup the data on any that you are concerned with. Regardless of what is supposed to happen it is a horrible idea to do anything like that without backing up the data on the other partitions first.

 

[foscooter]

Before for I can help with the how-to's:

How many hard drives do you have: 1?
How many partitions are on it now: 2?
SO you have an OS on one partition, and data on other(s)?
What size drive (not partitions)?

 

[ED_GE]

Before for I can help with the how-to's:

How many hard drives do you have: 1?
How many partitions are on it now: 2?
SO you have an OS on one partition, and data on other(s)?
What size drive (not partitions)?

Well the PC in Q. has a single 500gb hard drive.
It has four partitions
C: (Winxp installed) 75gb
D: 150gb
E: 125 gb
F: 150gb

All are almost full, And the other hard disks in other systems i have are also full so a full bakup is out of question

 

[foscooter]

If you have that much sensitive data that you want to save, and set up a dual boot, I suggest getting another hard drive! You need a back-up.

Get at least 1TB, I'd go 2TB, and put all that D,E,F on it. Then use your 500GB for playing with OS's.

Or get a smaller drive for just OS's (like 128Gb-250GB). This might be better if you have limited funds. Have you thought of a SSD? For dual boot, you'd want at least 120GB, they are around $120-190.

Moving all your data off the same drive as an OS will save you in the long run. You can install, reinstall, partition, whatever, and not even touch your data.

You can even get an external HDD for back ups. Hitachi has a USB 2TB external for $119.99. That's cheaper than an OEM drive right now.

On a side note, have you ever heard of K.I.S.S.? (Keep It Simple, Stupid). I'm not calling you stupid, it's just a saying.

The more complex you have things, like multiple partitions on multiple hard drives, the more prone to failure or loss you are. Believe me, I've been down that road. I once had a 2.5GB drive partitioned up into 6 parts, to try to make it faster. The drive has noisy as heck, as the read heads had to fly all over the drive to get stuff. Now I just keep things in seperate folders on the root of the drive.

But to answer your OP, No, you can't do it. You want to split the C partition into 2, and save, or don't touch the others on the drive. I know of no way to do this.

However, you might be able to shrink the C volume in Disk Management, to create another partition. Anyone?

 

[ED_GE]

Best answer selected by ED_GE.

 

[ED_GE]

I gave up the idea, formatted and installed windows 7, was hard to quit good old Windows XP but coudnt risk the data, isnt a question of limited funds,I am running three different gaming machines just that the fake Thailand flood shortage thing has sky rocketed the prices of HDD's, and i m surely not gonna pay those inflated prices.

Thanks for replying though.I still think it might be possible to modify a partition without effecting the data on others, dosent linux encourages you too free up allocation on the disk to make a new partition with it, will experiment when i buy a new HDD

 

[bnot]

AnonWD
To Whatever user searches for this later on.
the free version of acronis true image that you can get on any hd manufacturer's website has this option

to delete a partition and set up new partitions with the free space.

I'm doing it now on my second computer and will tell you how it goes.

and it's been 3 months and the new sata WD5000AAKX I brought seems to be running just fine. (Price was ok at the time, I thought the quality would be bad and I would get a dud right away but will see how this goes)

I just feel like zeroing the partition monthly so that there isn't weird fragment issues and I'm going to have to take a risk and see what happens.

I brought it locally without weird mail in shipping to ding it.

Temps are 43c - 42c idle in a bad case and sustained sequential writing makes it go to 45c (backing up to 3rd partition)

Random access (as in doing more than one thing at a time, transfer files + thrashing the pagefile makes file transfers like 1 MB per second)
I think they weren't meant for multitask. if you do single tasks, it goes to like 30 MB per second read and 25 write ish.

C: OS
D:Small Partition Essential Data
E: Temp Backup to reinstall os
like giant game setup files you don't want to redownload or service packs

I also found a new (old) tip, it seems to speed things up. (Google Firefox Ramdisk)
It's either use a ramdisk for firefox cache or use the memory cache instead of disk cache.
I did this, only I set my ram usage to 512MB, things just load smoother without some crazy HD access. That should save a lot of power if everyone adopted the practice and hopefully save some HardDrives (SSD)
http://lifehacker.com/5687850/speed-up-firefox-by-moving-your-cache-to-ram-no-ram-disk-required

Or use the other way if you have more ram maybe
http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/11/10/how-to-move-the-firefox-or-chrome-cache-to-a-ram-disk-and-speed/

I'm not sure if this allows flash videos like youtube presidential debate to download to the memory instead of constantly writing to a harddrive. but that is sort of the goal here, to move things to ram. Hope you like the tip.