Partitioning "Live" hard drive

[StrangerInBeijing]

Hi,

I got a single 40g hdd on this machine with a single partition with WinXP installed on. Dont want to mess with this installation, but need another partition?

I once read you can do this, I mean partition a hard drive that were allready installed on.

Any advice?

[dglienna]

only if you used less than 100% of the available size. if you used it all, there is nothing that you can do.

[StrangerInBeijing]

Yes, of course.
But how?
pls, pls...for some reason I have to learn something about Linux urgently!

[szlamany]

I believe a product called Partition Magic will divide a drive into partitions without killing the whole data structure...

[dglienna]

Under XP, you can go to Administrative Tools - > Computer Management -> Disk Management

If you have any free space, you can click on the free space, right-click and I think that will bring up the options that you need to format it and set it as a partition. I don't have any free space so I can't try it, but my buddy only formatted half of his drive when I installed it, and he told me that he formatted the other half this way and is using it as a new partition.

[RobDog888]

szlamany is correct. Its called Partion Magic and I have used it before. It can resize a single live partition
into multiple partitions but you only need to take into account the data size. If you have a 40 gb drive and are
only using 15 gigs then you can repartition it into two 20 gig partitions and have your live used partition of 20 gigs
with 15 gigs of data on it still and the other will be a blank 20 gig partition.

[StrangerInBeijing]

HI,

I tried PartionMagic, and seems the trial version that you can get for free only allow you to do the "virtual" part.

Once one click Apply, you are told that this action are not supported by the trial version.

Or I'm just plainly stupid as usual and missed something?

btw...You cannot use WinXP's DiskManager to do this, I tried. That's only if you got unformatted partitions allready.

[RobDog888]

Correct, you can not use windows disk manager. You need to purchase PQ Magic. Its not too
expensive and it works great. Just set the size and reboot. While its rebooting it runs a batch process
to resize the partitions.

[dglienna]

only if you used less than 100% of the available size. if you used it all, there is nothing that you can do.

I said this as the second post in the thread.

[RobDog888]

If you did use 100% youu could always remove some data and burn it to CD/DVD. That should be able to free up
many Gigs. Then you can resize the partition and put the archived data back on if you really wanted to.

[dglienna]

I wouldn't burn 20 g to CD. Copy it to another machine or another disk drive.
It may even be a better option to get another disk for Linux

[RobDog888]

I was just showing the possibilities that even if your hd was 100% full there are other ways to get around it.
What if the user does not have another system? Then they must burn a CD/DVD or delete some files if
they dont have a burner.

[StrangerInBeijing]

I Means for free.....and don't give me the nothing comes for free stuff...watch me solve this for nothing ...

[dglienna]

You can format your drive for free

[StrangerInBeijing]

Hi,

Thanks to a virus or something I was forced to follow your advice dglienna!!!

Oh..b4 u preach...this puter was on my previous firms network, with some network virus scan, from there I had no virus protection when I took it off....LAME excuse I know.

Thanx for all the advice, I learned a bit!

[ajames]

or, you could write your own partition/virus scanner in visual basic!
it saves money
it wastes time