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Creating a partition without formatting?

A

AntiFreze

Golden Member
So I have a 640gb sata HDD with a copy of vista running, however, I replaced the motherboard and I can no longer get into it. Is there some way to create a new partition on that 640gb HD for me to install a new OS without losing all the data I have on that HDD?
 
bad approach. stick drive into secondary position - and read it.

installing anything on the drive is a oopsy too late thing. data recovery software can help if you did that already.
 
Use diskpart or any other disk management / partition problem and set the partition with your OS in it to active. Something similar happened to me. I thought my partitions got corrupted at first, luckily I tried what I mentioned above.
 
Beautiful_Life said:
Use diskpart or any other disk management / partition problem and set the partition with your OS in it to active. Something similar happened to me. I thought my partitions got corrupted at first, luckily I tried what I mentioned above.
Click to expand...

The problem is, is that the drive currently isn't partitioned. It is just a single 640gb partition with everything installed/stored on it. I wanted to know if I can partition it on the fly from a boot cd.
 
Bootit next generation can resize the partition and alow you to install windows and then still be able to access the old partition once installed. Just download the iso and burn a cd or make the usb version the whole program is small. don't install the program just do partition work and then run the normal installation when it reboots you should be able to access you old info.
 
AntiFreze said:
So I have a 640gb sata HDD with a copy of vista running, however, I replaced the motherboard and I can no longer get into it. Is there some way to create a new partition on that 640gb HD for me to install a new OS without losing all the data I have on that HDD?
Click to expand...
Sounds like you may not need to play around with partitioning at all.
Create an Ultimate Boot CD for Windows, boot from it and use the tool Fix_HDC to remove the HD controller, remove the CD and reboot.
 
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AntiFreze said:
The problem is, is that the drive currently isn't partitioned. It is just a single 640gb partition with everything installed/stored on it. I wanted to know if I can partition it on the fly from a boot cd.
Click to expand...

Your drive is partitioned. It's just you have only one partition on it. Partition does sound like "to split". But in computing a "partition" is a segment of your HDD and that segment can be as large as the whole HDD. To "partition" doesn't necessarily mean to split the HDD into multiple segments. I can mean to create just one segment. You have to partition the HDD before you can use it because there are some data written at the beginning of the partition telling the program its type, size and other information I'm not familiar with. The problem you're facing now most likely is the partition isn't marked as active anymore.
 
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Blain said:
Sounds like you may not need to play around with partitioning at all.
Create an Ultimate Boot CD for Windows, boot from it and use the tool Fix_HDC to remove the HD controller, remove the CD and reboot.
Click to expand...

Well, it attempts to boot into windows, I get the little progess bar that vista has, then it flashes to a BSOD and reboots right away.

Do you think the Fix_HDC will work for this issue?
 
Beautiful_Life said:
Your drive is partitioned. It's just you have only one partition on it. Partition does sound like "to split". But in computing a "partition" is a segment of your HDD and that segment can be as large as the whole HDD. To "partition" doesn't necessarily mean to split the HDD into multiple segments. I can mean to create just one segment. You have to partition the HDD before you can use it because there are some data written at the beginning of the partition telling the program its type, size and other information I'm not familiar with. The problem you're facing now most likely is the partition isn't marked as active anymore.
Click to expand...

So with the tools mentioned in this thread, I should be able to create a 2nd partition on my drive without formatting?
 
It's rebooting because it's trying to boot from the old disk controller, not the new one in your new motherboard. The Fix_HDC tool mentioned is designed to do that, although I've never used it.

There are ways to fix that. However, as noted, I'd first want to copy off any truly important data to another disk.
 
Alright, so here is what I will try:

1st - Repair with Vista CD
2nd - diskpart and set the partition with your OS in it to active.
3rd - Fix_HDC to remove the HD controller, remove the CD and reboot.
4th - Bootit next generation - to install a new copy of vista and still save info


sound good?
 
Blain said:
Sounds like you may not need to play around with partitioning at all.
Create an Ultimate Boot CD for Windows, boot from it and use the tool Fix_HDC to remove the HD controller, remove the CD and reboot.
Click to expand...

ok, you roxors, for real. I tried doing a vista fix, attempted assigning the active partition, but the fix_hdc worked. I then went into safemode, and vista booted, and restarted in regular mode and everything is working right now (except for the ethernet, but ill fix that np).

This advice was a lifesaver. I have all my information and vista is running again on my new motherboard. ty again kind sir.
 
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