Reconfiguring Disk Partitions

Question

I just received a Dell Inspiron 1721 laptop with a 160 GB hard drive (I know, I should have bought a larger hard drive). The OS is Windows Vista.

I want to reconfigure the hard drive so the OS is in its own partition, and the applications and data files are in their own partition.

The hard drive is designated as “Disk 0”, and is currently partitioned as indicated below. I have no idea what the first segment is, what the Recovery (D) partition is for, or what the last segment is for. I assume it is the "OS C:" partition that I need to split.

· First segment – 63 MB Healthy (EISA Configuration)

· Second segment – RECOVERY "D:" 10 GB NTFS Healthy (Primary Partition)

· Third segment – OS "C:" 136.49 GB NTFS Healthy (System, Boot, etc. Primary Partition)

· Fourth segment – 2.50 GB Healthy (Primary Partition)

The C partition currently contains about 25 GB of OS, application, data and other files.

If I am muddling through the help files correctly, I can accomplish what I want to do as follows.

· “Shrink” the C partition to 30 GB

· Create a new partition in the vacated space (about 106 GB)

· Uninstall the application programs from the C partition

· Install the application programs in the new partition

· Move the data files (there aren’t many yet) to the new partition

The Windows Vista files take up about 9 GB of space, so there will be a very inefficient 21 GB of unused space in the C partition. Pictures and videos are located on an external USB hard drive. Therefore, the 106 GB of space in the new partition is expected to be adequate for the rest of what I do.

Will this work? Is there an easier way?

I understand that there are third party disk managers which do this kind of stuff, but I don’t want to spend more money if I can reasonably avoid it.

Thanks for any help offered. I clearly don’t know what I am doing.

GreyMack · Answer

Your objective is logical and appropriate, but Dell has already allocated the limit of four entries in the primary partition table so you'll need to decide what's most important, and how best to implement any changes. In addition to Vista, Dell Diagnostics, Dell PC Restore, and Dell MediaDirect each boot from a dedicated primary partiton.

For a start, maybe you can replace the Dell PC Restore feature with a better imaging/storage/recovery strategy, and save anything related to recovery anywhere other than the primary system disk.

Then you could delete the Recovery partition, move the OS/C: partition down about 10GB, and then implement your plan for a new partition, even solving the sizing problem if Partition Magic is both compatible and non-destructive.

Microsoft has introduced a newer method (GPT) of partitioning hard disks to replace the old MBR standard, and is flexible enough that it would resolve the immediate problem, but I don't know if/when Dell is going to ship systems with disks partitioned in that method.

GM

Message Edited by GreyMack on 09-02-2007 01:32 AM

Storage, Drives & Media

Reconfiguring Disk Partitions

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