Re: Partitioning drives with XP Pro

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The date and time was 9/3/2008 9:26 PM, and on a whim, Dan pounded out on the keyboard:

Thanks Terry. Yeah, I've been thinking of upgrading to a larger HD. However, WindowsXP, and all my program files including SP3 and all other program updates are only using 9 GB right now. I want to partition it so that the "SYSTEM" drive will be 12 GB in size. I think the extra 3 GB will suffice as a free space cushion. Does that sound crazy? Personally, I think it's good use of disk partitioning. If a restore is ever done (and I've got a recent image of the HD) then I can restore the system files ONLY and leave the second partition alone which may contain recently updated documents, photos, ect.

"Terry R." wrote:

The date and time was 9/3/2008 7:18 PM, and on a whim, Dan pounded out on the keyboard:

Running Windows XP Pro SP3. This is the setup....

HD #1 - 40 gig (one partition)
Drive C:\ (System) 40 gig

HD #2 - 40 gig (three partitions)
Drive D:\ (Backup) 3 gig
Drive E:\ (Setup Files) 1 gig
Drive F:\ (Music) 33 gig

Two questions...Is there a way to partition the first drive (with Windows on it)?
Secondly, if I use disk management in XP to delete the drive D or E partitions on HD #2, will I lose data in drive F partition? Drive D is the active partition, E is an extended and F is a logical drive...I think! Thanks in advance for any help.
Hi Dan,

First, two 40 gig drives is very small. You could partition C using a 3rd party program like Partition Magic, but chances are you need at least 40 gig for the OS & programs and data.

Usually logical drives are created in an extended partition. So E and F should both be logical drives within an extended partition. If you have Partition Magic to do the C drive, then you can easily remove partitions from HD2, so you could extend drive F to the full space of HD2, which sounds like you want to do.

XP's disk management can create and delete, but PM can resize and do much more. I use PM for partition backups in addition to resizing when needed.

In addition, I suggest you get an external backup drive, to back up your entire system. You don't realize how valuable your data is until you lose it without a backup.



9 gig? That's either very efficient or not very many apps! ;-)

My OS partitions vary between 3 (win9x) to 7 (XP), but I have a data drive and an application drive (8 gig) also. I have additional space around those partitions, so if needed I can expand their size, but I haven't done so in quite a while, except for the data drive (which also has a mirror).

If you don't have a need for more space, it sounds like you already know what you want to do.

--
Terry R.

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