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MegaCharger   06-18-2003 at 12:24:18 AM

I have a WD 120GB SE, and I would like to partition it into 20-50-50. The 20 I'll use it to put my windows and vital files, one of the 50 is for games and the other for my college works. But how do you partition it!? I've asked around in [H]ardOCP and they told me I should be able to do it in the xp setup screen. So I booted up from the xp cd and that formatted my HDD and its original partition(just 1 partition of 120gb). But there is nothing that tells me how to partition it into 3 drives! Then someone told me I can do by running compmgmt.msc in the run window. A thing popped up, I go to disk management but I don't know how to do it in the windows interface!(sorry, too much of a newb to do it using command lines) I go to help, it saids

"Right-click an unallocated region of a basic disk, and then click New Partition, or right-click free space in an extended partition, and then click New Logical Drive."

I tried to right click everywhere on that screen but all I go is a menu with "Open" "explore" etc. but there is no "new logical drive"! How should I do this! AHHH!

This is what the display of my HDD"
Volume: (C:)
layout: partition
type: basic
file system: NTFS
status: Healthy(system)
capacity: 111.78 GB
freespace: 103.13 GB
% free: 92%
fault tolerance: no
overhead: 0%

How do I partition it into 20GB-50GB-5-GB!?!?!?!?!? Any help would be appreciated...

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jiffy   06-18-2003 at 01:58:27 AM
- 0 +

I don’t think you can create a partition from scratch in the disk manager, if you can I sure don’t know how.

How you want to partition your HDD is up to you, but a lot of people make the C: partition much smaller. At the moment mine is just under 5GB, but then you have to put everything on another partition. Reasons for me are, scan disk runs faster, and more importantly when I make an image of C: to save my a$$ it only takes about 5 min. to restore or create.

Anyway I would of used FDISK right from the get go. Either buy using a Win98 CD or 98 boot up floppy, or better yet use the xpboot <A HREF="http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm" target="_new">Windows XP</A> Do you know how to use FDISK, hmmm, maybe not since you didn’t use it.

<b>Steps for partitioning a hard drive using FDISK </b>

This looks about right.

20000-50000-100% is what you want to use to set the partitions. If you don’t see 50000 when you make that partition try 50%. It might be hard to get them perfect and your going to lose space, so you won’t see 20-50-50. You can delete them if not happy with, but try to get it the first or second time.
1. Put xpboot on a floppy, boot, at A: prompt type FDISK, or type C: as below
2. From the C:\ prompt, type "FDISK" and press ENTER.
3. If you're changing the partitions on an existing disk, choose option 4 from the FDISK menu to display existing partition information.
4. If all of the space on the drive is already partitioned, you will need to use FDISK menu option 3 to remove existing partitions before creating new ones. Use Non Dos, if #3 doesn’t work.
5. For a new drive from which you will boot your PC, you must first create a Primary DOS Partition. Choose option 1 from the FDISK main menu and Select option 1 from the Create menu to create a Primary DOS Partition.
6. If you only want to have one partition on the drive, type Y when prompted to make one large partition. <b>If making multiple partitions, type N. </b>
7. Enter the size for the partition if you selected N in step 6.
8. To create an extended (non-bootable) DOS partition, choose option 1 from the main FDISK menu, then option 2 from the Create menu.
9. Must <b>Press enter to use all remaining available space for the partition. </b> Must
10. Create logical drives on the extended partition by entering the desired size(s) in MB or percent of disk space. 50000 or 50% for 50gb
11. Continue until all available space is assigned to logical drives. This is your 3rd Partition so use 100%
12. If you will be booting from this disk, choose option 2 from the FDISK menu and enter 1 to make the primary DOS partition ACTIVE. Yes make Primary partition active
13. Press the ESC key to exit FDISK. If running from Windows 9x, you must manually reboot your PC at this point. You must format all partitions before they can be used.
14. Boot from CD, choice your format, install to C:

Or since your OS is already loaded you can use <A HREF="http://www.powerquest.com/partitionmagic/ " target="_new"> partition magic 8 </A> to partition for you with out having to reinstall the OS and going threw FDISK.


***************************************
When you feel that reality does not suit you, live a fantasy life.<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by jiffy on 06/17/03 08:01 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

Reply to jiffy
nach   06-18-2003 at 02:08:52 AM
- 0 +

>So I booted up from the xp cd and that formatted my HDD
>and its original partition(just 1 partition of 120gb). But
>there is nothing that tells me how to partition it into 3
>drives!



You have to partition before formatting.

- Partition 120 into 1 primary 20gig THEN format this 20 for windows.

- The rest of disk can be one extended with 2 logical drive letters or 2 more primary partitions of 50gig each, can do this from inside windows.

** * <P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Nach on 07/10/03 04:53 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

Reply to nach
goloap   06-19-2003 at 01:12:30 AM
- 0 +

This is what I would do:
1)Do a clean install of XP on your HD the full 120gigs
2)Get Partition Magic and split the HD the way you like it

Partition Magic is really easy to use and you can undo your changes if you mess up.

In ancient times they had no statistics so they had to fall back on lies

Reply to goloap
Rob423   06-19-2003 at 02:28:18 AM
- 0 +

I have 2 drives, Maxtor 80gb, and a old maxtor 15gb, what will i benefit if i partition the Maxtor 80 GB? i already have about 16gb of the 80gb used up, so what would i benefit if i partition it? and will i lost anything by partitioning?

never partitioned any of my drives before.

RIG
Asus A7N8X Deluxe
80gb Maxtor
Lian-Li PC-60
Lite-On 52X
AMD XP2800+
LeadTek GeForce 4 Ti4200 w/vivo 128mb 8x
Hitachi CML174
1 GB Corsair XMS PC3200 Cas2

Reply to Rob423
goloap   06-19-2003 at 10:48:40 PM
- 0 +

The main advantage is that the partitions are more manageble. It takes less time to do a search, defrag and do a scan disk. There may be a small performance benefit but nothing worth talking about.

If you use a partition software (like partition magic), you won't loose any data. But it is always safe to backup your most important stuff just in case.

Also make sure you defrag your drive before using Partion Magic.

In ancient times they had no statistics so they had to fall back on lies

Reply to goloap
answer   06-24-2003 at 07:25:56 AM
- 0 +

Try this. Boot from wixp cd, it will let you choose which partition you would like to install xp. first delete the partition that is already they(same as in fdisk), follow instructions until you are asked to create a partition and set-up xp. select it and enter the size of the partition you want. repeat for your other 2 partitions. install xp on the first partition and you will be given an option to format it using fat and ntfs, select what you want and wait till windows installs itself. Hope it works

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Jake_Barnes   06-24-2003 at 07:02:49 PM
- 0 +

Please post what you did, if successful. I'm interested in doing the same thing. I want to print out some good "how to" stuff.

But Officer, I wasn't speeding - I was qualifying ...

Reply to Jake_Barnes
chandanarahul   06-26-2003 at 09:05:38 AM
- 0 +

Go to WinXP setup. Press F8 to "AGREE" EULA. Then you will get press "ENTER" to setup WinXP. Then u will see a screen that gives you the options

1.To setup the WinXP on the selected partition press ENTER
2.To create a partition in the unpartitioned space press C
3.To delete the selected partition press D

Since you already formatted, u must have a single partition C:\. Press D and delete it ( Later it will ask u to press L or ENTER to confirm ). Once you delete it, it will come back to the same screen with the same three options and u will see one UNPARTITIONED space (no C:). Choose option 1 and press C and it will let you create partition and later takes you back to the same screen. This time u will find one UNPARTITIONED SPACE and one partition. Highlight UNPARTITIONED SPACE and again press C and create the second partition. Follow the same and create the third partition. Later it will take u back to the same screen and here highlight the partition u like and hit enter to start the setup on that screen.

Reply to chandanarahul
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