Partition Hard Disk

I would like to know how do we partition the Hard disk? Should I use Partition Magic or are there any HP Software meant for the same purpose?

Besides I just got my dv2699 and would like to tell everyone that HP really rocks. Glad that I made the decision of buying an HP!

 

i then believe u are using vista? if yes then you do not need any software to partition your hard disk.

click Start and type Computer Management>Storage>Disk Management and partition. let me know if u have any more questions.

 

Found that. But how do I go ahead with the partition. Will I have to shrink the volume so that there is some space left and then make a Partition out of that?

 

yes u are exactly supposed to do that.

 

right click on the partition and click "shrink volume" then type in the box thats highlighted and do the amount in megabytes. for example if you wanna make a 100gb partition and you have 160 or 200, just type in the amount of 102400. thats exactly 100gb. or 51200. Get the drift.

 

I would ask why are you trying to make a partition? There is almost no reason these days to have another partition, and messing around with them can cause you to lose all of your data. Partitioning is one of those things that if you have to ask how to do it, you probably shouldn't be.

 

I did do it many a times in XP, just that I had forgotten the process and was a bit confused with this OS. I have divided even 40 GB HDs so partitioning a 250GB HD is a must. I like it that way and therefore went ahead with it.

 

@ Orev. I don't understand what you are talking about. Nowadays especially with vista it's a must to partition your hard drive.

I made the mistake in the beggining of not doing it. and vista crashed on me and I had to reinstall. I lost all my data. Thankfully I had a semi backup which has my important stuff. All my movies, music etc were lost.

Since I made the partition I had to reinstall vista 2 more times and both times after reinstalling it, I had all my data on the second partition. which was safe from vista. So I think it's important to partition hard drives.

 

And in regards to a person not knowing how to partition, I would suggest read up on it a bit. Or ask someone that knows what they're doing. I strongly suggest to NOT play around with it, if you do not know what your doing. I already posted previously how to shrink the volume. I can help you out a little more if you want. I would still suggest for you to look it up online.

 

There's no reason you needed to lose all of your data when you reinstalled. If you don't format the system, then it just installs on top of what was already there. It's not clean, but it preserves your data which is worth the trouble. Is it Vista's fault you didn't also have backups?

If you've needed to reinstall so many times, it's because of something YOU are doing to it, it's not Vista's fault. You're probably installing something that's not compatible with it, or some spyware or even just poorly written software. How much stuff are you downloading without knowing what it is first? If something keeps crashing and you need to reinstall, you need to ask yourself "What am I doing to it that's causing the problem?"

The only other possibility is bad RAM, so test it with memtest86+. See my guide for details.

PS: it's "especially"

 

Thank you for correcting my mistake.

I was in fact installing a lot of different programs. But the fact of the matter is, what do you lose from creating a partition, and weigh it against how much you can gain.

The reality is, MS Vista is not a very stable OS. There will be times when one has to reinstall and it's more effective to do a clean install while at it. To save a person the trouble of making backups, burning cd's etc. It's so much easier to just create a partition and not worry about it.

Besides, I've spoken to many people about this, and the reality is, that when you have a partition, it keeps things organized and easier to find. I feel there is a performance gain, though that has not been proven.

All I'm saying is that in my opinion, if you know what you are doing, then creating a partition is the smart way to go.

 

You lose flexibility and add management overhead when using a separate partition. You either need to search for all of your files on the other drive, or you need to use junction points or otherwise relocate your profile to the other disk. If you're not doing relocating your profile, you're already disabling a lot of the work Microsoft has been doing to centralize and make systems more stable and manageable.

The reality is that Vista IS quite a stable OS, because many people have been running it for a long time now with little or no problems at all. The only difference between my Vista and your Vista are the different programs installed on it, so by process of elimination we can say it's those programs, not Vista. Maybe if you post a list of things you have installed, we can help you figure out what's causing your instability problems.

As for performance gain, this rumor persists for years, but there is nothing behind it. By now enough people would have figured out that it makes a clear difference if it did, but they haven't so the answer is it doesn't.

 

Granted that Vista is stable enough. I tried installing MagicISO and MagicDisk. I dont know what it did, but it succeeded in crashing my windows. I have used that program on XP for years.

So it's not THAT stable, it's good enough for the average user. Most people that want serious power and stability stay with XP.

Listen I don't really want to argue because there so many different opinions on this matter.

All I'm saying is that, in my opinion creating a partition is better. I created a partition and I put all my Media in that partition.

For me having the partition is much easier and more efficient for my day to day use. For everyone else, I don't know.

 

Id have to go with making partitions while doing a clean install. Its a good idea separate your OS and files on different partitions. If your OS crashes its much easier to access your files and recover them

Even if you can do a repair install, its much better to do a clean install when your OS crashes and you still have the same files as before

Im sure vista is more stable that xp but I tried to do a repair install on XP before and it kept failing giving me install errors. I did have it partitioned but i still lost some small files that i left in the OS partition

 

So you agree with me on the point that making partitions is a good idea, and that people should do it?

What do you mean by "Im sure vista is more stable that xp". You think vista is better then XP?

 

Yes i agree that having seperate partitions is a good idea. Its also a great way to sort out your files. Not too sure what orev meant about losing flexibility and management

Vista for stability wise yes, performance wise no. Ive only had 1 BSOD on Vista so far, on xp ive had abit more. Only problem with Vista is compatibility on some hardware and software

 

Exactly. Everyone I've spoken to about this has told me that partitioning a hard drive is a good idea. I don't know what Orev was referring to, but I happen to think he is wrong in that category.

 

The problems with partitions relating to management comes in a few different forms:

You make partitions for your OS and one for your data. You're not sure how much you need on either one, so you guess. Inevitably you will find that you made one of them too small and the other has tons of extra space, so you wind up installing programs on your data drive, or storing data on your OS drive. Resizing is not always an option, depending on the fragmentation of the disks and the placement of the MFT, which cannot be moved.

Windows expects certain files to be in certain places. When you store all of your data on another partition, you need to change around a few things. You could relocate your profile to the other drive, you could just redirect your Documents folder there, or you could just get in the habit of keeping all of your files on the D: drive. Relocating your profile is the best thing to do, but since it's a pain, most people never do that. The other options leave you with data all over the place, because not all of your data is stored in the Documents folder. Stuff like outlook pst file, bookmarks, firefox data, thunderbird email, etc... all store stuff in the profile but not in the Documents folder. So if you just reinstall without a backup, you'll lose that data that you thought you had. If you opt to just always store everything on D: out of habit, that still doesn't take care of stuff on your Desktop, and you also have to tell every single program you use not to use the default folders, but the D: instead. That's a lot of "management" headache.

Some people say that you can gain performance this way. That is not true. It stems from the fact that you CAN gain performance from another physical disk drive, and many who do not understand this perpetuate the myth by thinking it also applies to partitions. The disk still only has one head, and if you move the data to another part of the disk, it could actually slow things down a bit, because the head must constantly move back and forth. The impact of this is not huge, but neither is any possible performance benefit.


OK, so there are 3 scenarios about why you shouldn't use partitions. The arguments FOR using them are bascially, "if i screw up my computer i don't have to worry about having backups". You're free to take that route, but it would be very foolish to rely on that other partition instead of also doing real backups. "I know i know, i'll get around to it one of these days......"

 

First off Orev. I am not talking about putting program data on the 2nd partition, cause that in fact would be foolish.

What I am talking about, is placing Media and documents on the 2nd partition, For example, I have a 200GB HD about 180GB free after vista. I made my primary 80 and then I made 2nd Partition 100GB, D: naming it Storage.

I highly doubt anyone is going to use more then 80GB worth of program data. I have about 6 games installed at the moment on my C: drive besides all my other programs and I still have about 40GB free.

In regards to my D: drive, I place all my movies, documents, install files on the D: drive. So in fact if I needed to reinstall vista. Then I end up having all my movies music etc in a safe place while the C: drive stays clean.

What ends up happening is, less fragmentation because the files are all organized into different folders.

Being that it's the D: drive and no programs are installed to it. There is no fragmentation nor are there any "lost" files, because it's very organized.

So in essence the hard drive head doesn't have to make full rotations through the whole HD when opening up a program because 100GB of it is a separate partition. A separate partition in Vista's eye's are like another HD. So vista thinks you have 2 HD's, It makes things more simple.

Granted, if the person has an 80GB hard drive and makes another partition of 60GB leaving is operating system only 20GB, That is stupid. But nowadays where the standard HD is 160, I dont think anyone is going to have a problem.

In regards to resizing partitions, you are right. Things can get real messy doing that type of thing and I would suggest staying away from ever doing that. but as long as you've got enough space, I don't see any problem whatsoever

 

I killed my HP recovery parition and it is currently unallocated. Any danger in expanding my C drive to make use of the 6+GB ?

 

I wouldn't suggest it. Expanding the C: drive where vista is installed can create conflicts. I would suggest in Creating a new partition with that unallocated space and name it D: or whatever. Trust me, stay away from expanding drives. let along the C: drive.

 

Thanks - Done

I can use the drive for loading video for editing and not worry about shadow copies or over whelming my Seagate when it backs up my main drive.

 

Good stuff. Take care

 

No problem doing that. Once it's gone, it's just empty space.

 

You think he should do it.? I tried doing that once and i screwed up windows, I had to reinstall.

What happened was, I had to do a boot time partition merging, because you cant edit the C: drive as long as vista is open.

And for some reason it was taking several hours and at one point it just stopped. When that happened I though it froze, It didn't move a drop for well over an hour. So I rebooted, yea I know, bad move on my part. From then on I couldn't get into windows, it said something about the partition being damaged.

I had to reinstall and I lost everything. I had a backup but the most latest stuff I lost.

This is why I told Arthurofchicago not to mess around with it, especially if he doesn't know that much about it. If you think otherwise, ok.

I'm just trying to help the guy and save him some hassle later on.

 

Hmm, well, I have done a shrink partition before with Vista running, using the Vista disk manager, and it did not need to do any of that. I didn't have any issues. What software did you use to resize?

 

you don't want to do something like that within your os. you have to download special boot-up software that's designed to mess around w/ your partitions w/o an actual OS being on. for me, linux live CDs are the best things to do this with. you can resize, merge, or create partitions this way. it's a lot more fail-safe too

 

Benx009. You are very right and thank you for agreeing with me on this point.

Orev, Arthurofchicago wasn't talking about shrinking his C: drive, if you read carefully he was referring to "Merging both partitions" or "Expanding" the C: drive to occupy the unallocated space.

Either way you cannot do any of those while vista is running, the same way you cant edit or delete a file that is open. Essentially when vista is open on the C: drive, you can shrink it because there is empty space that is unallocated, but when you are trying to merge the partition, your messing around with the vista's file system which is running at the moment.

Now, like benx009 and I both said, you need to do it through a boot time partition editor. It's not possible to "Merge" or "Expand" the C: drive while vista is running.

The point I'm trying to make is that it's not a simple process and it definitely requires an adequate amount of experience in that field.

So therefore in my suggestion to arthurofchicago, I specifically told him to stay away from it, either get a friend that knows what he's doing or look it up online and get very clear instructions on how to do it.

 

Hey, thanks guys.

I think I'll play it safe. I mostly know just enough to get myself in trouble.

I can store certain downloads in D so it won't stay empty.

 

Smart choice arthurofchicago. I hope all goes well with you.