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| There are many reasons why people decide to put multiple partitions on their hard
drive |
| The size of each partition varies with the actual size of the drive, size of the programs you are |
| going to install, and the amount of data you will be storing. Since we are using a 30 GB hard drive |
| as an example, I recommend a setup like this: |
| 4 GB for the operating system |
| 8 GB for the program files |
| 18 GB for your data storage |
| This will vary from user to user. Some users might not save huge amounts of data on their local |
| drive. Some might store more data than programs. The one thing that should stand solid is at least |
| 4 GB for the operating system. This will give the operating system plenty of room to install itself, |
| plus room to grow with updates and patches. Take some time to decide how you want to set up your |
| machine. Think ahead on what the machine will be used for down the road. You don't want to have |
| to go through this again if you don't have to. |
| If you don't want to reformat your whole drive and lose all of your data to get this done, I |
| recommend a product called PartitionMagic from PowerQuest. This piece of software allows you to |
| resize, create, and delete partitions on a drive without data loss. Even if you reformat your drive, |
| you can use a very nice GUI interface under DOS by creating 3.5 floppy disks after loading |
| Partition Magic. See the help files included with the program for details. |
| PartitionMagic is not freeware or shareware. You will have to shell out a few bucks to get the |
| program. I have looked for and tested free clones of this product, but haven't had the success that I |
| have had with Partition Magic. In my opinion, it is worth the investment. |
| You don't want to spend a lot of money on another product? |
| Fortunately for you, there is a free alternative built into Windows. You can do all of this with a |
| Windows Startup Disk. To create a startup disk in Windows 9x/ME, go to Start | Settings | Control |
| Panel | Add/Remove Programs. Click on the Startup Disk tab and then click on the Create Disk |
| button. You may be prompted for your Windows 9x/ME disk, so make sure you have it ready. |
| For Windows 2000 and XP users, insert a floppy into your computer's floppy drive. Open My |
| Computer, and select the floppy drive. Next, go to the File menu, point to the name of the floppy |
| drive, and then click Format. Under Format options, click "Create an MS-DOS startup disk." |
| You now have the files we need to get this project started. And now is the time where you should |
| copy from your machine all the data that you want to keep. |
| Insert the Startup disk and restart your machine. When you get to the Command Prompt, type |
| 'FDISK' and press Enter. You will then be asked if you want to enable support for large drives. Hit |
| "Yes" if your drive is over 2 GB. The next step is to delete all existing partitions on the drive. |
| Select option 3 in the main menu to do so, and follow the instructions on the screen. |
| Now, back to the main menu in FDISK, where we want to create a primary partition. Choose option |
| 1 to do so. This is where Windows will be stored; therefore, we want to select this partition to be |
| the active partition. Follow the steps after selecting option 1. Since we are creating more than one |
| partition on this drive, when FDISK asks if you want to use all of the space on the drive, be sure to |
| tell it no. You will then be asked what size you want it to be. Remember the 4 GB rule as stated |
| above, and adjust it accordingly. |
| You should now be back at the main FDISK menu. Now we need to create an extended DOS |
| partition to hold our other two partitions, or "logical drives." Select option 2 to do so, and allocate |
| the remaining free space on the drive. |
| Next from the main menu, select option 3 to create our first of two logical drives. Allocate the |
| amount of free space you will need for your program files and leave the rest for the data partition. |
| Follow the steps to make the first partition, and repeat after returning to the main FDISK menu to |
| allocate the remaining free space for our data partition. |
| Return to the main menu and hit Esc to exit the FDISK program. Restart your machine for the |
| changes you made to take effect. Once the machine has restarted, restart the machine again - this |
| time, with your installation disk for your operating system. Windows should see three drives. |
| Install Windows on the C: drive, and you're off and running. When you reinstall all of your |
| programs after reinstalling Windows, remember to install them on drive D: (which is the partition |
| you set up for them) and save all of your data to drive E:. In the unfortunate event of Windows |
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