Laptop HardDisk Partition

vinana

Junior Member
Feb 5, 2014
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hi

I have a laptop with 2 partitions.
First is recovery partition of windows 8 (around 10gb) and
other partition for data and software (around 500gb).

So my question is that

I want to create 5 partitions of 100gb each of my 500gb partitioned hdd.

So if i create these 5 partitions of second partitioned hdd, WILL MY WINDOWS RECOVERY PARTITION GET AFFECTED OR DELETED.

Thanks
Vineet
 

Essence_of_War

Platinum Member
Feb 21, 2013
2,650
4
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You should be able to re-size, and create new, partitions without affecting the other ones.

HOWEVER

Partition editing incurs some risk, and I would certainly image or clone the entire hard drive to back it up before I starting doing any partition editing.
 

corkyg

Elite Member | Peripherals
Super Moderator
Mar 4, 2000
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Agree with Essence. I Consider this. If you clone the drive to a less costly HDD and put it away, you can always revert to the current settings including the Restore partition. Having done that, there is no longer a need to preserve the Restore partition. You can also create Restore bootable media from that partition, and likewise, do away with it. That is what I have done.
 

Dahak

Diamond Member
Mar 2, 2000
3,752
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As mentioned above, it should not but I have experienced where if you modify the partition layout it can affect the recovery partition being not able to boot or make the recovery media after

to echo what corkyg said I would

1) make at least the Bootable Recovery Media first. This way if something does happen to the recovery partition you can at least restore the machine back to factory.

2) clone the hdd to either an image or to another hard drive, but not absolutely needed.

then you should be able to split drive up
 

C1

Platinum Member
Feb 21, 2008
2,340
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Havent kept up with partitioning, but even up to & including WINXP, a maximum of four primary partitions are allowed. To implement more than four partitions, extended partitions are required (presumably an old DOS legacy).

From practical experience (and lessons learned), I dont recommend creation of more than four partitions, plus make them all primaries (as extendeds are linked to a source primary).
 

Essence_of_War

Platinum Member
Feb 21, 2013
2,650
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Havent kept up with partitioning, but even up to & including WINXP, a maximum of four primary partitions are allowed. To implement more than four partitions, extended partitions are required (presumably an old DOS legacy).

With UEFI firmware, using a GUID partition table, this is restriction is lifted.

Does your laptop have UEFI-bios, OP?
 

Ratman6161

Senior member
Mar 21, 2008
616
75
91
Just out of curiosity, why do you wan't so many partitions? On single drive systems I usually just have two. One for OS and programs and the other for my data. This way if I want to do a wipe and resintall of Windows I can do so on the OS/Programs partition without fear of losing the data (though its backed up anyway so even then its not that critical). Lots of partitions can just get in your way unless there is some specific reason why you need them.
 

Essence_of_War

Platinum Member
Feb 21, 2013
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Just out of curiosity, why do you wan't so many partitions

Maybe giving virtual machines their own partitions?

Maybe a propensity for running every linux distro imaginable :p

I'm curious too, though.
 

Ratman6161

Senior member
Mar 21, 2008
616
75
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Maybe giving virtual machines their own partitions?

Maybe a propensity for running every linux distro imaginable :p

I'm curious too, though.

Actually my life kind of revolves around VMware these days. Putting VM's on separate partitions on the same physical drive does nothing for you. What is really helpful with VMWare workstation (and other virtualization products too) is to put them on a separate physical drive. Thats harder to do on a laptop but on mine ive got an ssd for my main drive and a hard drive in place of the dvd for VM's . Other things that work well on a laptop are E-Sata drives and USB 3.0 externals if your laptop support these.