Tech Support Forum - View Single Post

john6 · 10-13-2006, 10:34 PM

Hi hwm 54112, You're not hijacking any exchange of info is OK with me.
Now lets have a look at this partitioning subject: and I'm going to quote from Scott Mueller of Ugrading and Repairing PCs. Arguably the worlds best computer brain. It irritates him that people snatch at the meat of partitioning and most are not even aware of other equally important issues involved.
Although Windows is on C drive - the whole of your hard drive is also C drive.
so you have to come along with say PM and put a fence around your C drive then chop it off. NOW the remainder of the hard drive 'unallocated' space NOT 'free' space. It's only becomes free space After you have selected the size (sectors) of of your secondry partition. I shall keep this basic and not talk about adding swap and file partitions at this stage, highly recommended for security reasons. Finally there is the lettering issue C drive stays C drive. Now you cannot name your new drive D because you already have a D (conflict) so you have to name it E, so that letter when you do add other partitions, some may be very small, you are clear to do so with uninterupted F,G,H etc. Why? Because your computer then takes charge automatically taking the next letter up by default so your new partition will have to jump D -PM will ask you what letter you want, but from there the computer allocates and doesn't ask. Of course you should clean up your disc and defragg before any of this takes place. One obscure reason is that, suppose your new OS is Linux. Linux will find its own space. The downside is - 'anywhere available' which can lead to a slow OS so a nice big clean space is welcome. Note some OS's do not support scussy drives.
Fidisk has limitations. briefly - its destructive to your HD, doesn't provide help with lettering, requires the whole drive to be formatted before use, and might cause conflicts with existing CD Rom drives. Hope this will help you.
John6.

10-13-2006, 10:34 PM	#10 (permalink)
john6 Registered User Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 11 OS: XP and Xandros and Mndrake	Hi hwm 54112, You're not hijacking any exchange of info is OK with me. Now lets have a look at this partitioning subject: and I'm going to quote from Scott Mueller of Ugrading and Repairing PCs. Arguably the worlds best computer brain. It irritates him that people snatch at the meat of partitioning and most are not even aware of other equally important issues involved. Although Windows is on C drive - the whole of your hard drive is also C drive. so you have to come along with say PM and put a fence around your C drive then chop it off. NOW the remainder of the hard drive 'unallocated' space NOT 'free' space. It's only becomes free space After you have selected the size (sectors) of of your secondry partition. I shall keep this basic and not talk about adding swap and file partitions at this stage, highly recommended for security reasons. Finally there is the lettering issue C drive stays C drive. Now you cannot name your new drive D because you already have a D (conflict) so you have to name it E, so that letter when you do add other partitions, some may be very small, you are clear to do so with uninterupted F,G,H etc. Why? Because your computer then takes charge automatically taking the next letter up by default so your new partition will have to jump D -PM will ask you what letter you want, but from there the computer allocates and doesn't ask. Of course you should clean up your disc and defragg before any of this takes place. One obscure reason is that, suppose your new OS is Linux. Linux will find its own space. The downside is - 'anywhere available' which can lead to a slow OS so a nice big clean space is welcome. Note some OS's do not support scussy drives. Fidisk has limitations. briefly - its destructive to your HD, doesn't provide help with lettering, requires the whole drive to be formatted before use, and might cause conflicts with existing CD Rom drives. Hope this will help you. John6.