HD question-[partition]

[FactOX]

Just got first build system going, went pretty smooth-asus p3b-f,550e,g400max
Anxious to check out kickin g400 I let win98se boot and format when the time came.
I never got any options for partitioning(was late...sleeepy) maybe I missed.
Now ive got one big WD 20.5 reading @ 19.2 and before I put to much on the comp
Was wondering if I should boot the floppy disk utility that came with HD and format- partition?
Is there a way to partition at this point without losing installed progs?

[T'kul Bastile]

At this point the only way to partition your hd is by using a program like partition magic. Which would cost you about 50 or so dollars.

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System Specs:

One bourbon, one scotch and one beer

[FactOX]

Thanks for the tips, not what i wanted to hear but ... I think ill just format with HD floppy and start over.
50$ for what should be a one time partitioning BAH!!

[SCompRacer]

Regarding your 20.5 WD, remember the HD mfr rounds off 1GB to 1,000,000,000 bytes, while it is actually 1,073,741,824 bytes.
Thats why you are reporting 19.2 now.

I never thought I would use Partition Magic more than once, but with four hard drives and constantly changing things around, it's pretty handy to have. I use Drive Image too, copy my main op system for backup to another partition. Screw it up, 15 minutes later I am up and running again with all the updates, tweaks in place. Makes you brave, try anything!

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ASUS P3B-F * P III 500 * 256MB ECC RAM * Two Cheetah LVD's * Barracuda UW * DiamondMAX IDE * Plextor Ultraplex 40max/Plexwriter 12/4/32 * Hitachi IDE DVD * 2940U2W * SB Live * 3Com 905B-TX NIC * 3Com Courier V. * Hollywood + * Win 98SE, Win 2000 *

[T'kul Bastile]

FactOX: It depends on how you are planning the partition. If you are just going to divide it in half I would agree with you.

Now for me? I have a windows partition. This is about 1 1/2 gigs. It is mainly for windows and MS Office. Everything else goes onto the second partition. Why you ask? Cause when windows finally decides to take a dump, I do not have to reload everything.

But that is a personal pref.

The other question would be. do you ever plan on giving Linux a try. If so you will need a seperate partition for that.

Personally I have found partition magic to be very useful. But for you maybe just doing the fdisk once will be good enough. It all depends on what you need now and what you will want in the future.

Good luck

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System Specs:

One bourbon, one scotch and one beer

[cancer]

i'm with you T'kul Bastile, disk partition magic is a damn good program especially for larger disks. i've a 28.5g hard drive & i used it to partition my hard disk after installing windows. i wanted to get the most out of my disk so i formatted each section with the maxium size for 4k clusters(approx 8g each). it also grants the flexiblity to resize and create partitions on the fly. FactOX this is a good investment indeed, that and a ghosting program is ideal for general disk management.
cheers.


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Aopen HX08 full tower case, Asus P3V4X bios 1.03, P!!! FC-PGA 550e @733, 160M pc100 sdram, Matrox G400MAX bios 1.4 PDesk 5.52.015, Seagate 28.5G Ultra ATA66 7200rpm HD, Pioneer 103s DVD 6X/32X drive, SB AWE64 Gold ISA sound card, SMC pci ethernet adaptor, Castlewood Orb 2.2G media drive, Nortel 100 cable modem, Mitsubishi 1995 19in monitor, occasionally use dualhead for dvd on a Sony 80cm Wega TV, MS natural keyboard, MS Intellimouse Explorer,
Win98SE 4.10.2222A, DX7a.



[This message has been edited by cancer (edited 26 April 2000).]

[FactOX]

Thank you all, very usefull and intelligent feedback

[ahartman]

Sort of off the topic, but if your Windows partition blows up, isn't your registry gone, too? How does all the software on the other partition work without the registry entries?

To get back on topic...

I had Partition Magic and loved it - only thing to be careful of...

You have 2 partitions, 1 is 500M, the other 2.5G. You want to make the 500M to be 250M. If you have more than 250M on that 500M partition, PM will blow it away! Make sure you have the empty space on the partition you're modifying or you WILL lose data.

As for backup, I installed Windows and all the updates I needed/wanted and burned a backup CD. Easy enough to go back to once I destroy my system. I may change my methods depending on others' response to the 1st part of this note...

Andy

[Jammrock]

You just have to be schneeky! Yes your registry is gone, but when you ghost your computer you get an 'old' copy of the registry back so you are only out a few installs short instead of a bunch.

For example, I have 2 hard drives, one for OS's and one for data. I install Win98, all my drivers and Office 2000 on the win98 partition on the OS hard drive. Then I install everything else to the second hard drive. The registry will keep all the info for the stuff I have installed on drive 2 in registry, but I can still keep my ghost image down to 1 CD. So now when I ghost my Win98 partition I only have to install apps that I did not have installed when I created my last ghost image, which still saves me several hours of install time

Jammrock

[Jammrock]

Partition Magic is my friend. I can't count the time and energy PM has saved me. Need some extra space on your game partition to install all 4 CD's of Diablo II, no problem, PM can do it in no time. Boot Magic is great for multi OS boots, too. Version 5.0 has some nifty features. You can merge partitions, but all it really does is copy all your junk to one of the partitions, merge them and run Drive Mapper. It works though. And there's nothing like creating and formatting a 10 GB drive in 20 seconds! A must for all computer psycho's.

Another nifty program I use a lot is Norton Ghost. It's similar to Drive Copy from Power Quest, but its more robust and used more widely among companies. Ghost can creat a compressed image of a partition or hard drive. You can then put them on a special bootable CD and create your own rescue CD's. Complete re-installs of Win98, with all drivers, Office 2000, Nero and a few other programs takes a whopping 10 minutes with my ghost rescue CD

Jammrock

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Athlon 650, Biostar board, 128 MB PC133 (Crucial), G400 32 MB DH, SB Live! w/ Digital I/O, 10/100 NIC, lots of case fans, etc...