Partition the rest of the hard drive

(continued ......)

Diy-Computer-Repair can help!

Now I get to tell you why you don't want the setup program to create more than one partition:

When you create partitions from the setup program, you are really in DOS, not a 32 bit OS (like NT or 2000, or XP). DOS can only create one primary partition, any other partitions are called extended partitions. The drawback on using extended partitions is that you can only have one, and you can only have four volumes. Lets say you have a 250 gig hard drive, your OS is the primary partition, you set it for 30 gig, this leaves you with 220 gig of open space, now a lot of stuff can get lost in that much space (really - think about it..........) so you say how would I organize that much space? Break it down into smaller chunks. You use the storage manager to create partitions and volumes.

Using system manager go to drive management. You will see two drives - your OS drive and your CD/DVD (unless you put in another drive that has already been partitioned and formatted).

You will also see a block, it will have a label on it that indicates it has not been partitioned. You can partition it as one drive or you can make a bunch of smaller drives. You should consider how you want to organize your data.

With a 220 gig drive I would divide it up into three smaller partitions, two eighty and one sixty gig partition. One for media (video clips and dvd's eat a lot of space), one for your personal data like finical and documents, and the last can be miscellaneous stuff.

If you right click on the white space of the drive you will get a small menu, you select create a partition, select Primary for all partitions, do not fall into the extended partition trap. ( if you go with extended and add another hard drive to your system at a later date you may not have any volumes open to add the drive to the OS!)

After you set the size of the partition, then the drive letter, a format menu will open, you can take the standard format or quick format. The standard format will take some time, fifteen minutes to hours depending on the size of the partition, I use the quick format most of the time unless I have a drive that has had problems in the past. Be sure to run the utility to check the drive for errors, it is located under the properties on the tools tab, it will be faster now than later with a lot of data on the volume.

Once the format is complete you are ready to use the drive, for any more open space just repeat the above steps for each partition you want to create. (Don't forget to run the Defragmenter once a month to keep your drive at optimum operating speed!)


You can now go to Performance optimization.



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