Partition

[rootbear75]

Need a bit of help.

 

I m probably going to get PartitionMagic via a torrent, but I was wondering if there was any easier way to partition my drive.

 

Had problems getting XP on it, but finally did.

Stepfather partitioned the WHOLE thing as 1 drive instead of 2 like i wanted it.

 

Any easy way to do this? or do i have to dl partition magic... because I'd rather not

[★ doc flabby]

I had much success with the live cd from this site http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

 

I Managed to resize my windows xp ntfs drive so i could try out linux

Edited February 28, 2009 by doc flabby

[tcsoccerman]

i'm not sure what you're intentions are, but when i installed ubuntu there was a built in partitioner that worked well.

[🜲 Samapico]

i'm not sure what you're intentions are, but when i installed ubuntu there was a built in partitioner that worked well.

Yeah, when you do it as you install the OS it's pretty easy, but he had trouble getting XP installed correctly, so I assume he doesn't want to start that process over

 

 

 

But why would you rather not get PartitionMagic? It always worked pretty well for me. Though a program that does the same thing without the hassle of finding a serial for it would be better

[Cancer+]

If you just got on XP..you can't have that much information on it. Just back up the info and reinstall windows/set a new partition.

[rootbear75]

i'm not sure what you're intentions are, but when i installed ubuntu there was a built in partitioner that worked well.

im not using ubuntu now am i?

 

But why would you rather not get PartitionMagic? It always worked pretty well for me. Though a program that does the same thing without the hassle of finding a serial for it would be better

meh, i guess... i was wondering if there was a free tool though... guess i'll go torrent it.

 

If you just got on XP..you can't have that much information on it. Just back up the info and reinstall windows/set a new partition.

i dont like doing reinstalls... hassle... and im lazy

[★ CRe]

Use a gparted livecd. It does wonders.

[🜲 Samapico]

That thing can resize partitions with stuff on it?

[★ CRe]

That thing can resize partitions with stuff on it?

 

"..The purpose of GParted is to allow the individual to take a hard disk and change the partition organization therein, while preserving the partition contents..."

[Shock]

Mm.. PartitionMagic. Windows has the Disk Management tool.. you can try that.

[rootbear75]

Mm.. PartitionMagic. Windows has the Disk Management tool.. you can try that.

that was the first thing i tried.

It can't resize partitions... it will only partition unallocated space, and the whole drive had been allocated for the C: drive..

 

no worries, I dl'd partitionmagic via uTorrent. lets see what that does.

If it doesnt work, i'll try gparted liveCD.... is it free?

[🜲 Samapico]

If it doesnt work, i'll try gparted liveCD.... is it free?

From the fact that the link goes to sourceforge, I'd say yes

 

 

edit: I'm downloading it, 100MB .iso file

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/download.php

[rootbear75]

no worries, partition magic downloaded fine on torrent... so im set.. thx anyways

[prozaker]

maybe I'm late, but hirens boot cd comes with acronis disk director, which is pretty good.

 

hirens is a set of utilities to troubleshoot and fix windows computers and under 100 mb.

 

I wouldnt use qparted or gparted it doesn't handle ntfs partitions very good, happend to me on 2 occasions trying to resize and move a winxp partition.

 

everything got corrupted.

[⛊ Drake7707]

i used gparted with ntfs and i had no problems, if you change your primary ntfs partition you could get errors with windows, but a quick sfc /scannow fixed it

[JoWie]

Why partition?

 

You could save yourself a lot of trouble if you just create a virtual drive letter. Create a folder on your c disk and just run the command subst e: "c:\edisk"

[⛊ Drake7707]

I'd like to have 2 partitions so i still have my data if my os fucks up (and I don't like booting into knoppix to save data)

[JoWie]

I used to do that, but i got fed up with having one partition almost full and the other having a lot of free space.

If my OS crashes, it takes me 15 mins to remove the disk and connect it with USB to another computer.

 

It's also a performance hit in some applications like winrar. When you extract something, it first goes to the temp dir (usually on C:), then it is moved to the target destination. If the target destination is on a different partition it has to copy over all the data.

 

The only time I partition now is when i want to install multiple operating systems.

Edited March 7, 2009 by JoWie

[rootbear75]

mainly so if my OS gets corrupted and I want to reinstall, i dont have to reformat the whole drive and lose all of my info.

[🜲 Samapico]

If my OS crashes, it takes me 15 mins to remove the disk and connect it with USB to another computer.

And then a few hours of sorting and copying stuff for backup

 

Then reformat

 

Then reinstall OS (that is, if you don't need to put it back in the other computer for that)

 

Then another hour or so of copying stuff back

 

Then 15 minutes to replug the disk in the original computer

 

 

And all that just because you couldn't think of a viable disk space ratio for your partitions

[⛊ Drake7707]

Yeah, space is a bitch, i used to have 3 partitions: windows / programs & games / other stuff (movies, episodes, etc) but I ran out of space rather quickly. + swapping hard disks in a laptop (which is my only computer, unless you count a 8 year old pc somewhere stored that's rather ... slooooow) is not an option

[🜲 Samapico]

I use only 2 partitions... it's better to wipe out installed programs and games when you format anyway, usually they're the ones messing with your stuff

[JoWie]

If my OS crashes, it takes me 15 mins to remove the disk and connect it with USB to another computer.

And then a few hours of sorting and copying stuff for backup

 

Then reformat

 

Then reinstall OS (that is, if you don't need to put it back in the other computer for that)

 

Then another hour or so of copying stuff back

 

Then 15 minutes to replug the disk in the original computer

 

 

And all that just because you couldn't think of a viable disk space ratio for your partitions

 

 

It will always be a time consuming job, you still need to reinstall all your programs, drivers, etc. And what about left overs on your OS drive, you still need to sort that out to.

 

But how often does that happen? My old computer has been running the same windows installation for 5 years without any problem. Those 60 minutes I save every few years by partitioning is a lot less then the time is save by having only 1 partition, and you are still not safe from hardware failure. Ofcourse with larger and larger harddrives the space restrictions are less a problem.

[⛊ Drake7707]

That's why i'm trying to minimize my reinstallations by copying apps to a seperate directory and see if they still work after i uninstalled them. Now if only i could get sandboxie or whatever program to patch the programs (or use a rootkit method to redirect the api's) to read from and write to their own directory (+ registry edits), then i won't have to install stuff ever :/, I wonder why such a program doesn't exist yet, i'm fairly certain it's doable.

[🜲 PoLiX]

It is always smarter to install your OS on a seperate small hd or partition. One only a gb or more in size over (IE: XP 4gb). Then move your program files, common files, my documents, and favorites to the other hard drive or partition.

 

Why? Fragmentation, and Searching.

 

Everytime you open, change, move, save, really do almost ANYTHING to a file, it moves around on the partition, or is fragmented amongst it. This causes more holes and data for windows to read through to find what it is looking for on the HD. Same thing with having all your programs there. Even if you never ran them, it is still more data and files for Windows to scan the hd through looking for what it needs.

 

And Searching, well as it scans from 0 to 4gb and over and over it finds things faster. Again, improving perfomance. I once went 6yrs without re-installing 98 after learning all of this from a HD vendor's website. It now is also all over the internet, and for most companies a common standard with their higher up pre-builts.

 

My 2 cents.