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increasing partions on a drive

dgk
Grafter
Posts: 58
Registered: ‎16-02-2009

increasing partions on a drive

My hard drive is divided into four primary partition's. I would like to change it to 3 primary partitions, and an extended partition with a few logical drives. How do I go about doing this, I am running windows XP professional.
I have had a look on the Internet at a program which is free to download called Easeus  from www.partition-tool.com but it is not clear to me whether this will do the job
4 REPLIES 4
MisterW
Superuser
Superuser
Posts: 14,575
Thanks: 5,411
Fixes: 385
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: increasing partions on a drive

Have a look at 'gparted' here http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php. You can download a 'live' cd' from there BUT please do make a backup before you start, just in case.

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Not applicable

Re: increasing partions on a drive

Have used Easeus on a number of occasions and can say that it is very easy to use. Download it from download.com and have a look.
I haven't used it in the way that you describe - only to partition a C drive to C and D.
Also consider the Disk Management tool although can't remember if it is there in XP.
Right click on My Computer and select Manage.
Personally, I found Easeus much easier.
dgk
Grafter
Posts: 58
Registered: ‎16-02-2009

Re: increasing partions on a drive

I didn't say why I was wanting to change my partitions. I have bought an Iomega 1000 G esata external drive. It comes with some software called neverdown. This copies the entire disk contents of your PC, onto the external hard drive. It makes a bootable copy, and as it is an esata connection, the theory is that you can boot from and run from the external hard drive, a sort of fancy backup. My PC's hard drive is 350 G, so never down is supposed to allocate 350 G on the external hard drive for the backup, leaving the other 650 G free for other purposes. However what is happening is that the three 650 G is showing up as unallocated, and I cannot access it.
I was wondering if the fact that I have 4 primary partitions, means that when these 4 primary positions are copied onto the external hard drive, that is what prevents the use of the remaining 650 G. My understanding is that in my PC, as I have these four primary partitions I cannot have any more partitions on my drive, will this affect the external hard drive,
Any comments or opinions would be welcome.
I have had several online chat sessions with iomega, and have got nowhere. When I put this question to them they were fairly noncommittal.
MisterW
Superuser
Superuser
Posts: 14,575
Thanks: 5,411
Fixes: 385
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: increasing partions on a drive

Quote
I was wondering if the fact that I have 4 primary partitions, means that when these 4 primary positions are copied onto the external hard drive, that is what prevents the use of the remaining 650 G. My understanding is that in my PC, as I have these four primary partitions I cannot have any more partitions on my drive, will this affect the external hard drive,
Any comments or opinions would be welcome.

It sounds feasible, but you would have hoped that the Iomega s/w could cope with that. Even if you change it to 3 primary and 1 extended, the Iomega cant just image your partitioning since you can only have 1 extended partition.
Download the gparted live cd and just have a look at the partitioning on the Iomega. I assume the Iomega is a standard USB drive, in which case the live cd ought to see it as well as your fixed drive. On the main screen you select which drive is being displayed with the drop down selection box at the top right. It will probably show the drives as /dev/sda1 & 2 .Its pretty good at displaying the partition info and you should be able to see how the s/w has set up the drive.
Edit : oops I've just reread your post and noticed its an esata drive , so I'm not sure whether the live cd will see it , does it have a USB connection as well ?

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