Question and Answers

can't partition my HDD? - Chris running windows vista home premium, HP pavilion laptop dv60001.5Ghz dual-core processor, 2GB ram. and trying to split HDD so can daul boot. my partition will only allow to seperate 7.10GB from my 120GB. I have 41.31GB free and 7.10GB is all it will allow. Any suggestions?

Best Answer: If I had to take a educated guess (I am not certain), I would say the the tool you are using to partition the disk is only finding 7.1 GB at the end of the disk before it hits some data being stored. Many times when files are stored, they are not all written in the same part of the disk--the files are fragmented. This means that part of a file is stored on one part of the disk and a different part of the file is stored on a different part of the disk (physically). The data is still accessed as one file by windows, but the hard drive must physically access different locations on the disk. Partitions, do not split themselves like files do. If you want to resize an existing partition and then add another partition after it, you must have that amount of space free at the end of the disk without having anything written to it. Defragmenting the hard drive may help. Defragmenting groups the files that are scattered and broken into pieces all over the hard drive into one location on the disk. This might help you get a larger chunk of free space at the end of the drive and allow you to create a larger partition. - Me M

Start Control Panel, Admin Tools, Computer Management, Disk Manager . You can resize yr partition from there this is a Windows Vista feature - freebsd-unix.sg

You may need a second opinion on your current partition set-up. For example, when you say 41.31GB free, do you mean unallocated space or unused space? The two are very different. Also, though my experience is with XP, I've found that disk partition management under Windows is sometimes testy, like with partition deletion. Booting up from a disk manufacturer's (Seagate, WD) diagnostic CD or floppy (say what?) or something like SystemRescueCD (see http://www.sysresccd.org/) should not only let you validate the set-up, it may even allow you to change it. I used SystemRescueCD to partition my triple-boot system and to manipulate flag settings (boot, hidden, etc.) as needed. I've had no problems at all with SystemRescueCD and heartily endorse it for anyone delving into multi-boot situations. - lewist2ca

can still install the os on that size - bizboy13

Report Abuse

Best Answers are selected by the person who asked the question or other Yahoo! users. Find out more at Yahoo! Answers.