Formatting/Partitioning External Hard Disk

Question

I have just acquired a 500GB Iomega external hard disk which I have attached to my Dimension 4500, Windows XP SP2. I want to set up the new disk with three sections (partitions/volumes?); two sections to contain backups for the two internal hard drives and the other one to be an archive for videos and music. I have spent a long time trying to find the appropriate information but what I find does not appear to apply to my system. I have read KB 309000 but in the Disk Management procedure I can proceed no further than Step 1 because on my computer I am not offered the option "New Partition" when I right-click on the disk identity. Please can anyone advise?

Dimension 4500, 2.53GHz processor, 512Mb DIMM, Windows XP SP2 Home, 20Gb hard disk, 80Gb hard disk, Roxio CD R/RW, Blueyonder Broadband & LAN, Dell Photo All-in-One printer, 500GB External Hard Disk

Dimension 4100, 1GHz processor, 256Mb SDRAM, Windows ME, 20Gb hard disk, Adaptec CD R/DW, HP Deskjet 840C, Scanjet 3300c, Blueyonder Broadband & LAN

Inspiron 8600, 1.4 Ghz processor, 512Mb SDRAM, Windows XP SP2 Home, 40Gb hard disk, Philips CDRW/DVD disk drive, Blueyonder Broadband & LAN

Netgear RP614 v2 router.

Message Edited by thyde on 12-30-2007 02:05 PM

mombodog · Answer

First you have to delete the current partition, after that you can partition the drive into the sizes you want.

thyde · Answer

Thanks mombodog, I have managed to partition the disk with your help.     There is one snag, when DOS commands are needed the exact format of the command must be used, I don't know whether there is an up-to-date list of DOS commands anywhere but I had to struggle to find the correct ones.

mombodog · Answer

In XP I use disk management to partition and format

Windows General

Formatting/Partitioning External Hard Disk

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