Partitioning question.

[ddeder]

I have a computer running Windows 98 SE with a 40GB hard drive partitioned into two 20GB partitions (C and D). I have never stored anything on the D drive but there is about 48k bytes of data on that drive according to the drive properties screen. I have decided that I would like to have three partitions on this hard drive. Can I repartition my hard drive without losing the data on my C drive? I would like to remove the extended partition and then recreate it and divide it among two logical drives (leaving me with my original 20GB C drive, a 10GB D drive, and a 10GB E drive). Can I do this with fdisk and not risk losing the data on my C drive?

 

[Queasy]

You can not re-partition with FDISK without losing data on the entire drive. If you want to repartition you'll need a program like Partition Magic or something else.

 

[Muse]

How much data do you have on your C: drive? Do you have some way to backup your C: drive? IF you have a CDRW drive and a backup program such as Norton Ghost of Powerquest DriveImage, you can make a CDR image of your C: drive and then fdisk and repartition and reformat your 40 GB HD and then restore your C: drive exactly as it is now and you will have your repartition. You could get a 2nd hard drive and use that as you backup medium, among other things. It's a good idea to have some kind of backup in case your HD dies or in case your data gets screwed up. A backup program like Ghost or DriveImage is handy to use on a regular basis to accomplish backups, both of data and your operating system partition.

 

[altonb1]

Are we sure that info is accurate? I really thought you could use fdisk to delete the extended partition only, then recreate it without affecting the primary partition. I believe that you CAN do this, but I don't have any extended partitions on my system nor easy access to another drive to try.

i know when you are deleting partitions with FDisk, you have to delete the extended partitions before you can remove the primary, spo why couldn't he remove the extended, then recreate two 10GB partitions with the unallocated 20GB? It would be the same as if he ran fdisk for the first time, created a 20GB primary partition, then created 2 more partitions. In this case, the primary partition is already formatted and contains data, but I believe it is possible.

I recommend making an image of your C: drive, if possible, and then trying it. if you can do it without deleting the C: drive, you have a good backup as of the time you created it. (You can always delete it if you really want to do so) On the other hand, if I'm wrong, then no harm/no foul.

I really believe you can, though. As long as you leave the primary partition alone, you should be fine. You can also use other utilities such as partition magic to achieve this, though. Let us know!

 

[dsparks]

I have to agree with altonb1 on this one.

 

[Bglad]

I think alton may be right.

How sure am I? Don't ask me to be the one to test it. Back up that data!

 

[AKA]

He is right. YOU CAN do what you want to do with FDISK.

If Win98 is on the primary partition, then yes you can delete the existing logical partition then the extended partition and recreate them to your liking without it affecting the primary partition at all.

 

[fornax]

I recommend using Norton's GDISK -- it's great for partitioning in more complicated cases, not to mention it's much faster. You can get the command-line options from Norton's web site. And FDISK has problems with drives bigger than about 60GB.

 

[GiGoLo]

Altonb is exactly right... if your goal is to keep the C partition the way it is, you can always delete extended partitions without affecting the primary partition at all. for something simple like this, i would avoid using any 3rd party software to reduce the chances of your mbr getting messed up.