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| Thread ID: 39322 | 2003-11-03 00:49:00 | Partitioning | heaton (3697) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 188819 | 2003-11-03 00:49:00 | I have had my new computer for some months now with windows XP and umpteen megabytes of hard drive. I have thought of the idea of partitioning my hard drive and making a complete backup of all the important stuff on to the partition. Is it possible to do this without having to go into bios and all that complicated stuff at the risk of messing up the whole system ? Thanks for any help...........heaton |
heaton (3697) | ||
| 188820 | 2003-11-03 01:06:00 | It's possible, avoids entering the BIOS, requires the proper software and has specific steps needed to make it successful. There is the risk of messing up the whole system. How important is the important stuff, if it's vitally important then partitioning the drive and storing them on there is not the best method of storing important data. You really need to store it externally from the machine in case the hard drive becomes faulty. Whoever you bought the computer from is not responsible for your data, so if the hard drive does fail they do not have to pay a specialist to recover your data, they only have to replace/repair the item. |
Kame (312) | ||
| 188821 | 2003-11-03 01:53:00 | If it's only a few months old, you probably have a CD writer. Or evven a CD-RW writer. That's a safer backup medium. :D | Graham L (2) | ||
| 188822 | 2003-11-03 03:30:00 | Partition magic does that well. BUT there is ALWAYS a risk when using it. 99 time out of 100 it may work flawlessly, but then.....many tears and ripping of hair. Like the advisors above, I too would highly recommend a backup on a different medium for important data before attempting anything. |
Pheonix (280) | ||
| 188823 | 2003-11-04 02:31:00 | Did you know XP has a partitioner built in to it ?? I installed the Administrative Tools not long ago (look for it in your help files to get a description/explanation. Discovered (happily) that i could reformat a partition on one of my drives (after it had died) with Admin Tools (i have 2 drives partitioned to be 5 virtual drives). I have not tried to partition a single drive to several though, but presume it will do what you want. Usual precautions apply though - backup first if you can to CD. And make sure you don't wipe everything when you do partition.I presume that you will be able to create a 'primary' drive with all the stuff you already have intact - like partion magic etc will do. But research first so you know. Hey - good luck ;) |
icepac (4715) | ||
| 188824 | 2003-11-04 03:01:00 | > I have not tried to partition a single drive to several though, but presume it will do what you want . Yep, you sure can as I have done it . I had three partitions on one drive and deleted two of them (not the C: partition, of course) then created three thus giving me four in total . Remember that you will lose your data and obviously you can only do it to partitions other than the one your main operating system is on . Don't know if it will be useful or not but this site ( . pcguide . com/ref/hdd/file/part . htm" target="_blank">www . pcguide . com) has a lot of information about partitioning . |
Susan B (19) | ||
| 188825 | 2003-11-04 04:33:00 | I did my first partitioning this am, using Partition Magic. Heart in mouth stuff... I backed up to another network drive, then ran Partition Magic and it was simple to use and almost foolproof (well, I am a fool when it comes to these arcane arts yet it worked without loss of any data, so it MUST be foolproof!). But as the others say (and Partition Magic itself strongly urges this) back up before using it. I used Drive Image, but you can also use Ghost to get a full disk image. John |
John H (8) | ||
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