There are many reasons to partition your hard drive: security, data
redundancy, or simply for filing. You may also want to create a
recovery partition without all the bloatware that came on your
store-bought system. In these and any other case you can think of,
creating a partition is easier than you think. Here is our step-by-step
guide. And it's easier than you think.
Check Your Drive
You want to check you drive for free space. If you just bought your system, there's a good chance that there's a lot of free space left on your C: drive. If you've been using the drive for a while, there may be a lot less than you think. In any case, check to make sure there is enough space to create the partition (over 120GB for a 100GB partition, etc.).
Open a Disk management window on your screen. Choose the drive from which you want to create new partition. Right click on the drive and choose Shrink volume option.
Find the C: drive on the graphic display (usually on the line marked Disk 0) and right click on it.
Choose Shrink Volume, which will bring up a dialog box. Enter the amount of space to shrink the C: drive (102,400MB for a 100GB partition, etc.). Click on the Shrink button. Now, you can see the unallocated drive on the disk management.
Reformat The New Partition
A new unallocated block should appear next to the C: drive, which will match the amount of space you entered above.
Right-click on the box, and create a New Simple Volume. Follow the prompts, which will ask you how large to make the partition.
It will use all the free space by default, but you can create smaller, multiple partitions.
The system will prompt you for a drive letter, a choice of exFAT or NTFS format, and for a volume name. If you're just going to add another partition to Windows, choose NTFS. However, if you're considering something as radical as a dual-boot Hackintosh setup, where you run Mac OS X on a Windows PC, then consider using exFAT. The exFAT format is compatible with Windows, Mac OS, and some distributions of Linux.
You can just click through the defaults if you wish, or customize to your heart's content.
When you click finish, you'll have a new partition to do with as you will. You can save files and install programs to this new partition by saving to that drive. Just point your installers or save dialog boxes to the E: drive in this case. Also, you can setup a dual-boot of another operating system by installing the alternate OS on the new drive. You can set up Linux, Windows Vista, XP, or even Mac OS X on the new drive.
If you want to have extensive partitioning options, you'll need a utility such as Partition Commander ($40) or PartitionMagic ($69). They offer such options as changing the size of partitions and converting from different file systems. And, given enough free space, they preserve the data stored on your drive
Check Your Drive
You want to check you drive for free space. If you just bought your system, there's a good chance that there's a lot of free space left on your C: drive. If you've been using the drive for a while, there may be a lot less than you think. In any case, check to make sure there is enough space to create the partition (over 120GB for a 100GB partition, etc.).
Open a Disk management window on your screen. Choose the drive from which you want to create new partition. Right click on the drive and choose Shrink volume option.
Find the C: drive on the graphic display (usually on the line marked Disk 0) and right click on it.
Choose Shrink Volume, which will bring up a dialog box. Enter the amount of space to shrink the C: drive (102,400MB for a 100GB partition, etc.). Click on the Shrink button. Now, you can see the unallocated drive on the disk management.
Reformat The New Partition
A new unallocated block should appear next to the C: drive, which will match the amount of space you entered above.
Right-click on the box, and create a New Simple Volume. Follow the prompts, which will ask you how large to make the partition.
It will use all the free space by default, but you can create smaller, multiple partitions.
The system will prompt you for a drive letter, a choice of exFAT or NTFS format, and for a volume name. If you're just going to add another partition to Windows, choose NTFS. However, if you're considering something as radical as a dual-boot Hackintosh setup, where you run Mac OS X on a Windows PC, then consider using exFAT. The exFAT format is compatible with Windows, Mac OS, and some distributions of Linux.
You can just click through the defaults if you wish, or customize to your heart's content.
When you click finish, you'll have a new partition to do with as you will. You can save files and install programs to this new partition by saving to that drive. Just point your installers or save dialog boxes to the E: drive in this case. Also, you can setup a dual-boot of another operating system by installing the alternate OS on the new drive. You can set up Linux, Windows Vista, XP, or even Mac OS X on the new drive.
If you want to have extensive partitioning options, you'll need a utility such as Partition Commander ($40) or PartitionMagic ($69). They offer such options as changing the size of partitions and converting from different file systems. And, given enough free space, they preserve the data stored on your drive
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