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Trying to add partition to HDD

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Latest post 07/04/2009 01:59 AM by Xelkos. 7 replies.
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Joined on 10/06/2008
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Trying to add partition to HDD

30 Jun 2009 09:33PM

My  puter is an Inspiron 1720. The factory disk config is 86MB EISA primary no drive letter, D:\ 10GB NTFS Recovery primary, C:\  285GB NTFS Boot etc primary, and 2.5GB primary no drive letter. I can shrink the boot partition, but then I can't seem to  find a way to make the space that it leaves into a logical partition.

First question is what is the function of the 1st partition with 86MB, and the 4th partition with 2.50GB? What do I sacrifice if I delete the 2.5GB partition?

Second question is how do I make a logical partition out of the empty space? I don't see any way to do  this.

Third question is how can I shrink the boot partition even more?

Thanks,

Dave

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7 Replies:

Texas
Joined on 11/08/2001
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Re: Trying to add partition to HDD

30 Jun 2009 09:53PM

dbird1999

The 86mb EISA partition is the Dell Diagnostics and 2.5gb partition is the PC Restore utility, this restores the
system to an as-shipped factory condition.

See HERE

Bev.

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Re: Trying to add partition to HDD

30 Jun 2009 10:29PM

Hm! Seems like if one has a data backup solution, that might be also OK for the OS and programs backup and restore too. I like Norton Ghost for both. It has saved my skin quite a few times. So, if I want to deviate from my factory condition much I might be better off just dumping the rhe restore functionality and going with ghost...

Thanks for the reply.

Dave

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Texas
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Re: Trying to add partition to HDD

30 Jun 2009 11:04PM

dbird1999

You are welcome.

Bev.

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Re: Trying to add partition to HDD

01 Jul 2009 12:32AM

This still leaves the question of how to make a logical partition, and how to reduce a partition even more after an initial amount. The help isn't much help...

I'd appreciate anyone who cares to answer these.

Thanks in advance,

Dave

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Somewhere
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Re: Trying to add partition to HDD

01 Jul 2009 12:26PM

Your computer has a bios. This means your bootdisk uses MBR for it's partitioning layout. GPT is an alternative, but a computer that has a bios cannot boot to a GPT disk.

 

What this means is that your MBR disk can have:

- 4 primary partitions, or

- 3 primary partitions + 1 extended partition (which could have 1 or more logical drives in it)

 

So as your EISA partition, recovery partition, boot partition and that other 2.5GB partition are all primary partitions, you're at the max of 4 primary partitions. This is why you cannot add any more partitions.

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Re: Trying to add partition to HDD

04 Jul 2009 01:33AM

Hm! Is there a link or somewhere I can go to find out how the recovery partition fits in functionally with the others? If I delete the upper partition, that may make the recovery partition useless... I have seen other Dell Inspirons with a recovery partition but without the upper 2.5GB partition.

Thanks,

Dave

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Payette, ID
Joined on 09/13/2005
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Re: Trying to add partition to HDD

04 Jul 2009 01:59AM

I use Acronis Disk Director Suite 10 when I need drive partition management. In Vista it's a bit harder than with XP, as Vista wants about 10x more space made available than what is used. It's quite annoying to resize on the fly, but Disk Director makes understanding what partitions to what drives are, diagnostics, changing drive letters, and hiding partitions, and can even clone a partition from one to the other. It does a lot more, click the link to see more.

XPS 630i Intel Core² (Wolfdale) 3.0 GHz; BIOS: 1.0.13; 4 GB DDR2 @ 800 MHz;
Hard Drives: 320 GB, NCQ Western Digital; 640 GB, Seagate;
Optical Drives: 48x Combo CD-RW; 16x DVD+/-RW; Creative X-Fi PCI Sound;
Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT w/ 512 MB; 19 in 1 Media Reader w/ Bluetooth;
Vista Home Premium 64 Bit, 32 Bit; Windows 7; 2.4/5 GHz Wireless 1505 PCIe WLAN

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