Pulborough Computer Club

How to Partition

First Step

Back up your data. Make sure you have copies of your accounts, novel, address book off the machine before you begin. You'll get no sympathy if you lose it all.

Tools

The standard way to set up a blank hard disc from scratch is to boot from a floppy disc and use a fairly user hostile DOS program called FDISK followed up by the DOS FORMAT command.

To amend or create partitions on a working system, Partition Magic is the tool usually used.

I've recently found a better way - BootIt NG - which is shareware and does both jobs. It can also save and restore partition images.

Setting up BootIt NG

Download the program from here as a ZIP file and use Winzip to expand it into a temporary (or permanent) folder.
Run BOOTITNG.EXE which will invite you to create a boot floppy disc (or CD). Do so and don't forget to label it.
Leave the floppy in the A drive and reboot the system
BootIt will invite you to install it to your hard drive. Don't do it.
Click the maintenance button and the screen should look something like this.
Click the Partition Work button and the following screen is the result. You'll have rather fewer partitions than this extreme example - probably only one.

Converting an Existing System

Click on the first partition to select it and then click the Properties button at the bottom right. It ought to have one of these File Systems.
- 6/6h:Fat-16 Primary partition used by Windows 95 and some Windows 98
- 7/7h:HPFS/NTFS Primary partition used by Windows XP
- 11/Bh:FAT-32 Primary partition used by Windows 98 and above.
Don't change it. You can change it's name to something meaningful though.
Click OK and then click Resize. BootIt will next perform an error check and show the current size.
Set the New Size to a reduced value. (For most people, half the hard disc size or 10,000MB, whichever is the smaller, will be suitable.) Then click OK.
When the resizing operation is complete, the second entry in the partition work screen should now show -------......Free Space.
Go to Final Stages below.

Starting with an Empty Hard Disc

If there are any partitions shown, select each one in turn and click Delete. There should now be just one entry labelled Free Space.
Select Free space and click Create.
Set the size to the required value. (For most people, half the hard disc size or 10,000MB, whichever is the smaller, will be suitable.) and set the File System to one of the following.
- 6/6h:Fat-16 used by Windows 95
- 7/7h:HPFS/NTFS Used by Windows XP
- 11/Bh:FAT-32 used by Windows 98, ME or XP (Probably the best choice for most people)
Then click OK.
When the operation is complete, click Format.

Final Stages

Select the free space entry and click Create.
Set the size to the maximum possible and set the File System to 15/Fh:Extended. Give it a name of Extended or whatever. Click OK and wait for the operation to complete. This will act as a 'container' for the remaining partitions.

For each remaining partition that is required

Select the free space entry in the Extended partition and click Create.
Set the size to the required size and set the File System to one of the following.
- 6/6h:Fat-16 used by Windows 95 only
- 7/7h:HPFS/NTFS Used by Windows XP
- 11/Bh:FAT-32 used by Windows 98, ME or XP (Probably the best choice for most people)
Give it a name, click OK and wait for the operation to complete.
With the new partition selected, click Format.

OK, that's it, job done. The hard disc has been partitioned.

If you started with a working system, remove the floppy disc and reboot. It should come up just fine.

If you've got an empty system, all you have to do now is fill it Smile .

Now go here for instructions on moving data and temp files etc. to their proper place in the new scheme of things.

Postscript

If you later decide that you wish the partitions had been set up differently, BootIt NG has the tools to resize, and slide them around to make space where you want it and then either resize an adjoining partition into it or create a new one there.