Partitioning a hard drive

[phantasm72]

My old hard drive crashed and needed to be replaced. My new drive is 1TB, and I was wondering how you go about partitioning it? Id like a C drive for programs and D drive for personal stuff.
Cheers

 

[Tommy Boy]

You partition it when you install your operating system. For Windows it will give you the option to create partitions before you format the drive, you can make as many partitions as you want and any size.

 

[phantasm72]

ahh... so too late now. I didnt see that option, though I suppose it was because I was using a new drive, and not reformating an old one

 

[Celegorm]

Not really too late, just slightly more difficult.

Windows 7's Disk Management utility has the ability to shrink partitions. If you shrink down the C drive you can then use the "freed" space to create yourself a D drive.

There are other ways to go about re-paritioning without another reinstall, but they are a little more involved and not worth either of our time if the Disk Management utility can do the job just fine.

 

[phantasm72]

Not really too late, just slightly more difficult.

Windows 7's Disk Management utility has the ability to shrink partitions. If you shrink down the C drive you can then use the "freed" space to create yourself a D drive.

There are other ways to go about re-paritioning without another reinstall, but they are a little more involved and not worth either of our time if the Disk Management utility can do the job just fine.

Well, I have windows vista, is that still an option?

Edit: And the answer would be yes... easy as, once you know where to go... cheers for that

 

[Celegorm]

Sorry, I had assumed you were on windows 7 as that's where most of our questions spawn from these days. But as you found out it is in vista and I think you could do that in XP as well, but I'm not 100% there.

Either way, I'm happy to be of assistance.

 

[Tommy Boy]

I've used the shrink utility in Vista when I had it on my laptop, not to partition the drive, but to take space from one partition and add it to another. Everything worked just as it should, nothing went wrong and windows didn't crash or anything. But, I've never partitioned a drive after windows was installed so I really have nothing to lend on that matter.