Partitioning an existing drive

[Banderon]

Hey all. I have a 111GB C: drive right now, and I want to split that up into two partitions, a 5GB C: and a 106GB. I have about 50GB on the current partition that I can't loose.

How can I divide the drive up without having to erase the current partition and loose my 50GB?

I have an old ver of Partition Commander, but I hear it writes to the MBR and you can't get rid of it after that. It's like the AOL of HDs.

So... any ideas? Does Win XP (my OS) have anything built in that'll let me do this?



System:

Abit KG7-RAID
Athlon XP 2100+ @ 1920mhz
256MB Corsair XMS2400 C2
Asus V8200 Deluixe GeForce3 64MB
SB Live! Platinum 5.1
120GB WD SE 8MB Cache HD
Toshiba M1612 16x DVD-ROM
Lite-On 48x CD-RW

 

[arcenite]

Powerquest's Partition Magic is a great program, it will do anything you need it to when it comes to hard drives and partitioning.

 

[Banderon]

Does it write to the Master Boot Record? Patition Commander did, and it was impossible to get rid of it after installing it.

 

[AnAndAustin]

No, it's very simple and unobtrusive. The latest 2 versions fully support WinXP and the newest NTFS, I've used PMPro to repartition many disks and it is VERY good, obviously make backups but it is the best tool I've ever used esp in the latest incarnation which does away with a lot of resets etc.

Just curious but what format were/are you using, and why 5GB+106GB?

 

[KF]

I don't know what version of Partition Commander you have, but if taking it off the MBR is your only problem:

For Win98, run FDISK /MBR (you may have to boot to DOS.)

For Win XP, boot with the install CD. Select recovery console (press R). Run FIXMBR.

For me, things keeps on overwriting the MBR so I lose System Commander and have to get it back.

 

[HappyPuppy]

Backup, backup and backup first. Remember Murphy's Law.

 

[Deskstar]

Partition Magic works great (current version) with Windows 2000 prof to adjust the partitions. Recognize that it will install itself onto the first IDE drive and partition that it "sees". The actual partition process itself is done in DOS during a reboot that you perform. And, if you have an SCSI drive plus an IDE drive, make certain that the Partition Magic and the Operating system are installed on the IDE drive.

And the same company makes Drive Image that is great for automated backups to CDRs or to other hard drives.
Regardless, back up everything first.

 

[Banderon]

Thanks a lot for the MBR info. 50GB is hard to back up... ive been copying over the network for 4 hours now. =\

Partition Magic, got it. I have Ver 3... it was really good back in the day.

 

[DeschutesCore]

You'll have to get version 6 to even work right in XP and that may still cause problems. 7 and 8 work nicely.

DC

 

[Banderon]

Ok. Now, PM makes actual partitions, right? I mean, the partitions are on there as if I made them in FDISK or something. If I reformat everything afterwards (erasing PM) the partitions will still exist, right?

 

[SteelyKen]

Reformating a partition with PM on it will not have any effect on the partitioning of the drive.

 

[CrazySaint]

If you copy the entire contents of a HDD to a partition on another computer on your network, then copy it back again, is that as good as using something like Norton Ghost? I actually have Norton Ghost, but it won't backup over a network and I only have one partition on my HDD. I tried Nero, but it wants to backup the entire HDD sector by sector onto 118CDs, instead of just the 2GB that actually has any data on it! :Q

 

[KF]

>If you copy the entire contents of a HDD to a partition on another computer on your network,
>then copy it back again, is that as good as using something like Norton Ghost?

Well, that's the way I do it. I have Ghost, but it looks screwed up and weird to me, so I have never committed to using it for anything irreplaceable (what a backup is really for). The Info on the backup is only accessible to Ghost, and that scares me. If the info is in regular file form, you always have alternatives. In addition, I have a long history of Symantec products, going back to Norton Disk Utilities for DOS and Norton Backup for DOS, and the way they heavily promote a utility only to later cancel it and abandon it is sickening.

Ghost may be faster because of the different way it copies. Ghost may also have checking and error correction, none of which you get with file copying, I don't know. Finding a utility that will even compare EVERY file after it was copied is about impossible. (one thing I like about Nero.) Of course it takes twice as long.

If a disk is completely blank, just restoring the files is not sufficient. You have to get the boot sectors and the master boot record back, because they are not part of the file system.

 

[thorin]

Another vote for Partition Magic.

Thorin