Purchasing a new computer means one is already getting a hard drive that is partitioned. Usually such a 'new' hard drive comes with 2 partitions C and F.

But two partitions are usually not enough to play better safe than sorry.

To partition a new hard drive (the default is NTFS), one uses the Disk Management tool, a tool that comes from the old work-horse Windows 2000. To run Disk Management Tool:

1) click on Start,

2) right-click My Computer, and

3) select Manage from the menu that appears,

4) Computer Management window, will come up, thereafter

5) click the Disk Management item listed underneath the Storage heading, and

6) the main Disk Management pane will come up in the right side of the Computer Management window.

7) Unallocated space appears as an Unknown Partition in the Disk Management diagram. This space can now be used to create a new partition in some or all of the space.

8) To create a new partition, one needs to right-click on the part of the diagram that represents the unallocated space, the unallocated space has a black stripe running along the top and then choose the "New Partition" on the menu that appears.

Unfortunately, when one gets the new PC, all space has already been allocated to C and D most likely. However, this is usually not enough to carefully manage the drive. But within less than 1 hour doing one's dishes and/or watching the news while Windows does most of the work for you -- one can choose between two options to get more partitions to better manage one's hard drive as outlined below:

1) re-installing the Windows operating system, doing as follows:

2) Purchasing a commercial package to partition the hard drive without having to re-install Windows XP nor loosing data.

http://security.weburb.dk/frame/show/news/3606

2) Doing it like a geek for free is also a possibility:

http://security.weburb.dk/frame/show/news/3607

Regardless if one chooses to re-install Windows or circumvents this issue by having purchased a vendor's program, one must decide:

A) How many partitions to make (choose 4 - C, D, E, F)(more than 4 partitions will not work in Windows, unless your computer has two hard-drives installed or another techie feature just try partitioning more than four - the partitioning program will let you know if it works - but also consider rarely do you need more than four partitions on your hard-drive, and

B) How much hard disk space to allocate to each partition (see below for a step-by-step suggestion).

Always label the partition by typing a name indicating what you will use it for. For instance, with a 60GB hard drive , one could partition the drive as follows:

Windows XP doesn't provide a way to resize partitions later, however, one can can use a third-party program to do so. For more see here:

http://security.weburb.dk/frame/show/news/3606

Before working with partitions and drives, be sure to back up the important files on your system.

The Disk Management program replaces the Fdisk program that was part of previous versions of Windows.

The default file system on the hard disk is NTFS (recommended). Using FAT32 is not recommented.

NTFS has:

NTFS will also give you the option of enabling compression.

E - Documents

F - Miscellaneous

of a hard drive. So even if something happens on those portions of the hard drive you may not be inconvenienced much.

However, partitioning the hard drive as suggested above will help in reducing the chances for a disaster. As importantly, this approach enables you to manage the risk better of loosing important information while, still saving time in case a disaster strucks.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/expert/russel_october01.mspx

What can also happen is that you suddenly no longer have access to a drive/path (e.g., F) and it is shown with a * only. Here you need to go into the Windows Computer Management system and give the Drive Letter and Path a name different from *, such as F or J by right clicking on that * or volume.

If you need help to find the Windows Computer Management feature, no problem, step-by-step here:

Issues to Keep in Mind

1) Please remember that in some instances, the Product Recovery Disk (e.g., Toshiba or Sony) makes it so easy or 'user-friendly' to re-install Windows that you are not even given the option to choose how many partitions you want to have .... done automatically.

2) Generally you cannot have more than four partitions on the drive with Windows XP, unless you are a geek... in some instances it works with more. Nonetheless, four partition is plenty to work with and leaving a part as unassigned free space is okay. One can then assign that space lateron.

3) Take 2 hours during which you are uninterrupted by other work, children or something else, to carefully plan about and execute the partitioning of your new hard drive.

4) Please remember when partitioning your hard drive, you can have one partition as active only. This is the partition the system tries to boot from when you re-start the next day, so put as active the 10 GBs with Windows on (C). The other partitions, such as H, I, K (max 4 unless you have more than one disk on your machine! Remember?) must be set inactive but visible (so Windows Explorer can find them and let you view these partitions). If you fail to follow this procedure, you will be in trouble next time you want to boot your computer again. Then you will get:

Invalid partition Table

This requires that you repair Windows or worse you may have to re-install everything. This was the case with one of our Dell computers. Hence, as a result after re-installing you have again a blank hard disk...all files you created before or programs you insalled were lost unless you backed up everything beforehand -- A PAIN.