Forum Home
Press F1
Thread ID: 23695	2002-08-22 19:41:00	New Partition in XP Pro	Basil Pesto (541)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
73253	2002-08-23 09:54:00	I have partitioned lots of PCs and laptops but would not recommend it for an inexperienced user unless they were willing to lose data. As the previous post mentioned, it is not worth you buying a program when you will only use it once or twice - unless you get a group and install and uninstall the app on various PCs and share the cost The best option would have been to have it partitioned when you bought it I would just make a new folder and call it M drive and save your documents there The only real reason you need a partition would be if you decided you wanted to dual boot and I don't recommend this either If the time comes that you want to reformat, just copy the M drive to your CD writer and reformat the whole PC with the recovery CD If you have a Windows XP CD, you can repartition during the reformat	Marty2001 (421)
73254	2002-08-24 03:21:00	Basil: I get the impression that this is a"new" computer . So you haven't got much to lose . If you have a few files you have made, back them up with WinZip or something onto floppies or CD-RW . All the software which came with it should be stored on the CDs . If you have a CD (or more) for each item, you should have no problems . If you have a "Recovery CD", it should be OK, but it would pay to ask the shop (or manufacturer) if there is anything to watch out for . It's not a matter of "If you repartition, all you will be left with is a pile of smoking ashes" . It is just that so many people will not read the instructions . They get into trouble . So the tendency here is to warn people that things can go wrong . One major problem is making the "system" partition too small . It is hard to fix that when it becomes a problem . But if you are doubtful, just leave it as it is . It will work like that . Millions do work like that . And the safest rule with computers is: "If it isn't broke, don't fix it . "	Graham L (2)
73255	2002-08-24 05:06:00	Hi I recently also bought a new computer with XP pro and 80GB hard drive - I wanted to partition it so I could install Linux and also to reduce the size of the windows partition and for more flexibility When you do a clean install of XP from a CDROM it allows you to delete all existing partitions and create new ones of any size you desire - you will lose any data on the partitions you delete. If you create more than one partition, XP will create one primary partition and rest extended partitions. The only problem I had was I created two 1 GB partitions at the start followed by 9GB partition for XP, then another ten partitions or so - windows ended up on E: but insisted on formatting C: as well and has appended the name "system" to the C: partition even though XP is in E: My PC is working fine though. So if you install XP to the first partition (C: ) you should have no problems. Its very easy - you just select new installation during the install. If your computer came with drivers that have to be installed as well then you may find that after installing XP, you have to install those drivers before everything works normally e.g. for me, my monitor resolution was stuck at 400 by 600 (or something) until I installed the video driver. You can format (but not resize or create) unused partitions from within XP any time you like e.g. NTFS FAT32 FAT16. Thidr party tools like partition magic or system commander or bootitng allow you to resize partitions without losing data but its best to partition when you have a new PC rather than later on. If you leave unused space on the drive, Linux is able to partition and use that space when it is installed. As far as I can tell, the main benefit of partitioning (apart from multibooting) is that you can contain fragmentation e.g. some people recommend having a small 512MB partition just for the swap file which handles virtual memory. I've heard that if you have to reinstall the OS, having your applications in their own partition makes the process easier but I haven't figured out why this is. Possibly doing backups is easier if all the stuff that needs backing up is in one partition. Look for "clean install" on this site www.winsupersite.com Graeme	Graeme (1537)
73256	2002-08-24 05:11:00	oops - when I said "the rest extended partitions" I meant one extended partition with multiple volumes in it. You can create a boot disk from info/ download at www.bootdisk.com Graeme	Graeme (1537)
1 2