Partitioning hard disks

To partition a new disk, right-click on the unallocated section and select New Partition from the context menu.

This starts the New Partition Wizard, which asks whether you want to create a primary or extended partition. The answer depends on how many partitions you want to create.

Primary partitions are the most versatile and straightforward, but you’re limited to four per disk.

If more than four partitions are required, one must be designated as an extended partition. Extended partitions can themselves be subdivided into so-called ‘logical drives’, each acting like a separate partition and each one is identified by its own drive letter in Windows.

If the primary partition type is selected, the wizard asks how large the partition should be and displays the maximum available size in megabytes. Remember that for partitioning purposes, 1,024MB is equivalent to 1GB, so for a 20GB partition you’d select 20,480MB.

The wizard then asks which drive letter should be assigned to the partition and offers the next available letter on your PC, which can be changed if desired. The identifying letter of any drive or partition can be changed at any time by returning to Disk Management, right-clicking the drive and selecting Change Drive Letters and Paths.

The next decision is how to format the partition, and for partition sizes over 2GB the choices are Fat 32 or NTFS. For partitions smaller than 2GB there is also the option of Fat 16, which is offered under the name Fat.

Unless you’re tied to a particular format for compatibility with other operating systems, then NTFS is best. The big advantages for home users are increased reliability, greater security when several users share the same PC and the ability to compress data so that more can be fitted on to each partition.

Having made the appropriate selections, click OK to create the new partition. This closes the wizard and displays the new partition in the console, where it is then automatically formatted. If only part of the total space on a disk has been partitioned, the remainder shows as Unallocated. This can be further partitioned by running the New Partition Wizard again, or left unallocated for future use.

All of the above applies equally to extended partitions. The only difference is that, after creating an extended partition, the New Partition Wizard is invoked by right-clicking on the extended partition and selecting New Logical Drive.

Re-partitioning an existing hard disk
The options in the XP Disk Management console are simple and reliable, but limited in scope.

Partitions can be created and deleted but they can’t be resized or moved, and these are exactly the actions required if you want to change the partitioning arrangements on an existing hard disk. In such cases, a free program called GParted can do the job well.

It runs under Linux, but there’s a ‘LiveCD’ version available to download that includes everything you need.

Download the GParted LiveCD ISO version from Sourceforge and then use a suitable CD-burning package to create a CD from the downloaded ISO disc image (Windows itself can’t do this). Don’t just copy the ISO file on to a CD because it won’t work; it must be burned as an image. CDBurnerXP is a free program able to create CDs from ISO images.

To load and run GParted, your computer must be set to boot from its CD drive. After booting, when asked to choose which version of Linux to load, just press Enter. When asked to choose a keymap, type UK. When asked to choose a language, type 02 (for British English). When Linux finally loads it does so with GParted already running and ready.