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Partitioning Hard Drives?

Regicid3Regicid3 Registered User regular
If I ever needed to reformat in the future, I would like to avoid having to download various programs and installing games. Is there any way I can set it up so Windows XP will be a separate partition? Or would I have to get an entirely new hard drive?

Regicid3 on

Posts

  • LittleBootsLittleBoots Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    Regicid3 wrote: »
    If I ever needed to reformat in the future, I would like to avoid having to download various programs and installing games. Is there any way I can set it up so Windows XP will be a separate partition? Or would I have to get an entirely new hard drive?

    Yes you can do this. Just make a partition for windows (make it at least 10gigs for XP IMO because of some of the shared components that need to be installed to the windows root partition for some programs no matter where you choose to install the actual application). But Just because windows is installed on a separate partition doesn't mean you'll be able to install everything to another partition and have it all work if you need to wipe and re-install windows, thanks to windows damned registry system.


    EDIT. I.G My partitions are setup as follows C: is XP and what ever service packs it needs (10 gig partition), E: is 20gigs reserved for Vista (maybe). F: is a large partition for my games only and G: is a large partition for my non game programs and misc downloads.

    EDIT2: You MAY be able to get around the registry problem buy exporting copies of your registry regularly to one of you non windows partitions and restoring it upon reinstall. no guarantees though.

    LittleBoots on

    Tofu wrote: Here be Littleboots, destroyer of threads and master of drunkposting.
  • Regicid3Regicid3 Registered User regular
    edited May 2008
    Having around been using this new computer for a month now, is there any way to make this happen without reformatting and deleting everything I've already accumulated?

    Regicid3 on
  • bloodrbloodr Registered User regular
    edited May 2008
    Regicid3 wrote: »
    Having around been using this new computer for a month now, is there any way to make this happen without reformatting and deleting everything I've already accumulated?

    Yes, there's a program called Partition Magic that will allocate free space as a new partition without messing up your existing data. Use with caution and follow the directions exactly.

    Also note that it is not Vista Compatible.

    Maybe someone else can recommend an alternative.

    bloodr on
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  • SilvoculousSilvoculous Registered User regular
    edited May 2008
    Gparted (gparted.sourceforge.net). I would use this as my primary just because the trial version of Partition Magic doesn't actually...do anything. Not the version I last used anyway.

    GParted boots from CD and doesn't touch your hard drive at all...until you put it to work, that is. No other paritioning program need exist.

    Silvoculous on
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