[Macmac508]

Hi just wondering if anyone can tell me about Hard Drive Partitions. I was thinkning about ordering a PC when i was faced with the question will i be using hard drive partitions.

Can anyone give a quick explanation?

Thanks

[philthomas]

OK .... Often a Hard Drive is set up with just one large Partition, which uses all the space on the drive.
It is possible, however to have the drive space split into a number of Partitions. Each would have it's own Drive letter ... i.e. C: D: E: etc.

This can be quite useful to organise your files and data ..... for example, you may install your Operating System on Drive C:, your data on D: and Photos or Archive on E: etc. and all are kept seperate. This has the advantage that .... if your Operating System develops a problem and needs to be reinstalled, this can be done easily, without losing your Data etc.
It's also easy to have a dual boot system with 2 Operating Systems installed on seperate Partitions.

The possibilties are endless, but hopefully this will give you an idea.

[Macmac508]

Ok got it. Thanks a lot. Definitely sounds useful for me, my hard drive is currently a bit of a shambles. I have so many plans about how I'm gonna be kind to my new computer.

Do you set these partitions up after you've installed the operating system or before? And they wont have any effect on an external Hard Drive I have plugged in either?

Thanks

[philthomas]

Ideally it would be good to remove the HDD from the new PC and initialise the drive and set up the partitions, by hooking it up to an existing PC and using a third party program such as Partition Magic (XP) or Acronis Disk Director (Vista). Then refit it amd install your Operating System.

Having said that a lot of folk wont want to start messing around dismantling a newbuilt PC, so there are other options. In Vista, there are some inbuilt functions to allow you to resize and create new partitions, but some people are reporting problems with these. If this happens, then the only option is to use something like Disk Director.

I guess alot will depend on how confident you feel attempting it and how much you want to partition the drive. It should be easy and there are plenty of folk on here to help you if you hit a snag.

[mattyra1912]

There are also other ways to do this. I did not need to disassemble my new PC to pull the HDD out to hook up to another computer or install anything onto it to do so. I used a program (cant remember the name, look up boot up partition manager). This lets you set your partitions before you install any Operating Systems or putting Data on to the drive. It is ideal to do this because you when you partiton the disk if you accidently partition it incorrectly (quite easy to do) you will loose data and alot of time and effort.
Another program called Fdisk that microsoft have had created for years will also do the job :)

[philthomas]

Yes ..... there are plenty of utilities that run in DOS ..... some good, some bad, but these are generally much less user friendly than the likes of Partition Magic and Disk Director ....... if you are new to the concept of Partitions, I personally would not recommend them to someone new, but that is your choice of course

[mattyra1912]

true... dos utilities are not particularily user friendly but there are also other utilities that can be used on boot up to install these partitions. This would save time installing Operating Systems and then either having to uninstall them or refirect files and folders or even transferring the hard disk drive to another computer. I believe I also had a problem partitioning the drive that the OS was on with partition magic but this may just be my problem

[philthomas]

Can you recommend one ?

[mattyra1912]

Yes

http://www.softsea.com/review/EASEUS...n-Manager.html there you will fins easeus partition manager which can either be used within windows or placed on a CD with a bootup function. There is also one that I use and cant think of the name (CDM or something like that)