Hi guys,

 

mate fo mine has got a new windows xp home pc from HP witha single 80gb hard drive and partition. Thing is he would prefer 2x40gb partitions which i didnt think should be hard to produce. We tried through windows but with no success. I got hold of a copy of partition magic versions 8 and 8.5 full regisitered versions, but still no luck in moving/resizing the partition.

 

Surly there must be a way of doing this without formatting the pc and re-installing windows etc...

 

trouble is hp only give a full recovery disc and no windows only disc so the recovery would return it to the same state.

 

Cheers guys

Win XP:

Use dynamic disks

Several Disk Management tasks can be performed only with dynamic disks, including the ability to create fault-tolerant disks. Using dynamic disks, you can create and delete simple, spanned, striped, mirrored, and RAID-5 volumes. Dynamic disks do not contain partitions or logical drives, nor can they be directly accessed by computers running MS-DOS, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows NT, or Windows XP Home Edition, so you cannot start these operating systems on dynamic disks. However, shared folders on dynamic disks are available across a network to computers running all of these operating systems.

my mates pc is HP but he only has a recovery disc. Yes the drive is a dynamic disc if that alters anything guys.

 

 

Download a boot disc from the net and wipe it, recrfeate the partitions, the recovery disk it...

 

 

http://www.bootdisk.com I think...

so no way we can resize the apparent partitions on a dynamic disc?

or can a dynamic disc be cinverted to standard then resized?

I think you can use the XP Disk Management to change it back to a 'normal' disc.

i have had a look graham but havent been able to find that option.. anyone know where it is?

Try right-clicking on My Computer, then choose Manage...

then choose Disk Management. On the right you should see your disks. Right click on the area that says Disk 0, Dynamic, 90Gb etc. I am not sure you can reconvert back to Basic from Dynamic...

Thanks for finishing that off, was gonna go and look up on dynamic disks.

Ive been in the disc management but can-not see an option for changing it back from a dynamic disc? Do any 3rd party type programs do it ?

I didn't think you could change it back. Have you right clicked in the area I mentioned? Right click right on the part shown:

Yes, having checked the microsoft KB it appears the only way to convert it back is to format the volume which isnt helpful as it is the system volume.

 

The other thing i am confused about is the partition magic support website doesnt mention a problem with dynamic discs although the help section isnt great and i might have just missed it.

 

I am using version 8 of PM and that seems to be the most up-to-date, but it seems a pointless program now if it wont resize the partition and forces me to format as anyone can resize partitions on a clean install

TBH, a clean install is the best way and by far the cleanest bust as I say, you can resize and then use the recovery disk...

 

Shame I am so far away or I would do it for you dude...

no problems mate, was just trying to avoid the re-install.

one thing to remember reguarding partitions that hasnt been brought up here.

 

when a drive is formatted and then partitioned this information is written to the bootblock sectors of the hardrives info stack, this is not relative to the operating boot sequence, some drives require a format and partition prior to operating system installation. also one way to alter the partition is to alter the bootblock stack but for this you need the correct editior specific to the model of drive also you need the non partition and partition data to perform the relative changes to the stack in the editor.

 

80-90% of partition errors are down to corrupted bootblock stacks, i find this many times on clients systems, as such all new installs that i do never come with partitions and i never reccomend partitions, that is the joy of removeable hard drive caddies and the fact that external and flash drives are so cheap now.

Use Drive Image, or something similar, to make an image of the drive then zap the HD, partition it as you like, then reinstall the image on to your new, smaller, partition.

 

Or start it all from scratch!