A question on Partitioning

[Hamish+]

I have a laptop with WinXP installed, but I don't have the original disk (I do know the product key tho), but it is a legal copy of windows it was bought pre-installed.

 

It only has one partition. I understand to create partitions you need a WinXP disk right?

 

If I can get a copy of the disk, can I use it to create more partitions? WITHOUT interfereing with all the stuff on the partition I already have? (Hard drive has plenty space)

 

cheers

[Andavari]

You can partition the disk using free apps which you'd have to search for - mind you I've never used them therefore I can't give any insight on it. I wouldn't recommend doing it unless you first have in your possession a WinXP install CD since partitioning does run the risk of screwing things up. Also make sure you create a backup onto CD or DVD of all important documents and downloaded software before you attempt to partition the disk.

[gunner]

Be careful what you wish for.Most folks who have never done this end up losing data and reformatting anyhow, and at best you will achieve some security (the entire drive could fail) at the expense of a slower computer. I use another drive to backup with, and the expense is nominal. About 60 cents a GB used. Partitions were necessary at one time, but not anymore. Save yourself some grief and practice on a drive other than your primary. You will need an external drive connected through the usb port.

[Andavari]

I use another drive to backup with, and the expense is nominal. About 60 cents a GB used. Partitions were necessary at one time, but not anymore.

 

That's the exact reason when I order my system 2 1/2 years ago I had two internal hard disks installed, I didn't want to have to partition the disk anymore.

[pwillener]

Partitioning can be useful in some cases, and completely counter-productive in other cases.

 

There used to be a very powerful partitioning tool called Partition Magic from PowerQuest, but now it has ended up in the spidery fingers of Symantec, I am not so sure if it is still safe to use.

[DjLizard]

My votes are on QTPARTED and Partition Magic.

[Andavari]

Well I used Partition Magic many years ago on my Win98 system, and the good thing about it was that it would automatically change registry settings/values to point to the correct drive letter for things such as the Windows installation source, installer repair source disk/disc letter, etc., and without that functionality one could spend a long time manually changing such values. However if I were to partition today I'd wait until I wanted or needed to reinstall WinXP and just start fresh without any worries of something going wrong, or having to manually deal with changing registry values manually.

 

Reminiscing:

The benefit I got out of partitioning back in the Win98 era when OSes would suddenly become broken out of the blue was that the Windows installation CD setup files and .cab files could be copied to their own unique partition for installation, which for some reason always produced a more reliable and less buggy Win98 installation for some reason unknown to me. But that was a long time ago.

 

Partitioning can be useful in some cases, and completely counter-productive in other cases.

 

Yeah, and one thing I never quite got was people recommending to place the pagefile onto it's own partition, I've personally never messed with the pagefile in WinXP however I did screw around with it in Win98 which always created a buttload of memory related issues.

[pwillener]

...

Yeah, and one thing I never quite got was people recommending to place the pagefile onto it's own partition, I've personally never messed with the pagefile in WinXP however I did screw around with it in Win98 which always created a buttload of memory related issues.

The reason why placing a very large file (e.g. page file, or and Outlook PST file) in its own partition is that

1. You can make a partition with large clusters, e.g. 64K, and waste very little space

2. The file will never fragment

Another good reason for partitioning is porting of working partitions from older computers, or different projects that may some day be detached to another system.

 

Partitioning for the sake of partitioning is stupid. I have seen dozens and dozens of computers that were partitioned (C:, D:) when installed, but in practically 100% of all cases the D: drive was completely unused when the computers were decommissioned.

[Andavari]

Partitioning for the sake of partitioning is stupid. I have seen dozens and dozens of computers that were partitioned (C:, D:) when installed, but in practically 100% of all cases the D: drive was completely unused when the computers were decommissioned.

 

Yeah, a waste of partitioning in that scenario as you explained.

On my old system my D: partition is for the Win98 install files, archived Win98 MS security updates, and downloaded software. The E: partition is for .rar backups of my current WinXP system.