Re: Petitioning Hard Drive

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From: Ken Blake (kblake_at_this.is.an.invalid.domain)
Date: 08/01/04 

Date: Sun, 1 Aug 2004 11:41:52 -0700

In news:7ef801c47797$81cf25a0$a401280a@phx.gbl,
Gail <Gail222@hotmail.com> typed:

> I just got a new computer with Win XP Home Edition, and it
> has 160 MB hard drive. It came from Dell with most
> software already loaded on it. How can I put petitions on
> it without having to redo the entire hard drive?

First, note that the word is "partition."

You already have one partition on the drive. It's called C: You
have to at least a single partition before you can use the drive.
What you presumably want to do is divide that partition into
multiple partitions, without losing what's already on the drive.

Unfortunately, Windows provides no way of changing the partition
structure of the drive nondestructively. The only way to do what
you want is with third-party software. Partition Magic is the
best-known such program, but there are freeware/shareware
alternatives. One such program is BootIt Next Generation. It's
shareware, but comes with a free 30-day trial, so you should be
able to do what you want within that 30 days. I haven't used it
myself, but it comes highly recommended by several other MVPs
here.

> Also, not sure if I made a big mistake or not, hoping I
> didn't. I didn't get a floppy drive, and then I just
> realized that if I had to reboot from a disk, I can't do
> it from a floppy drive.

Since your hard drive is presumably NTFS, and since MS-DOS won't
even see an NTFS hard drive (at least not without special
software), booting from a diskette is not likely to be of much
use to you anyway.

> Since I don't have one, will it
> let me use the CD drive?

The Windows XP CD is bootable, and will normally let you do any
needed recovery work from there.

By the way, the absence of a diskette drive can't be a "big
mistake." Worst case, if you ever decide you need one--for any
reason--you can buy and install one. They are only $10-$15 or so,
and easy to install. 

-- 
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
Please reply to the newsgroup

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