How do you create extended partitions in XP?

MachineGunKellyMachineGunKelly The STICKS, Illinois
edited February 2005 in Hardware
I finally got my new HD installed today but made a mistake when formatting with regards to the extended partition. I didn't make one. Don't ask me how I did it, I just did. Musta been the exitement of getting a GOOD drive after three tries from WD.

Anyway, I have a WD SATA 80 gig special edition that I set a 8192 mb C: drive formatted in Fat 32 for XP Pro. When I went to format the extended space there was no drive letters to format. I popped up the CMD box and fiddled with diskpart.exe for a while but I'm not very used to it. FDISK is really all I know.

Can someone give me the rundown on creating an extended partition after C: drive from within windows? Or any other safe way? When I tried to type commands to diskpart it kept bringing up all the help commands so I dont think I have the switches right or something.

Thanks! MGK

Comments

  • MachineGunKellyMachineGunKelly The STICKS, Illinois
    edited February 2005
    Nevermind. I found it. Start > Control Panel > Performance and Maintenance > Administrative Tools. Double click Computer Management and then click Disk Management in the left hand column.

    Thanks anyhoo! :thumbsup:
  • MediaManMediaMan Powered by loose parts.
    edited February 2005
    Kinda makes life easy huh?

    :)
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited February 2005
    MGK

    Only one question here. Why did you format in FAT32 for XP as NTFS is waaaay better? :wtf:
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited February 2005
    I just use Partition magic, myself. Make a logical drive in the remaining space, it figures out that it needs an extended partition also to carry the secondary (logical also in this case) part(ition). I boot into that from a pair of floppies usually.

    Raptor1 is right, boot partition should be NTFS, but your secondary part inside the extended part can be FAT32 if you want that to be able to have backups always accessible.
  • botheredbothered Manchester UK
    edited February 2005
    OK. I have a small 5gig partition (C) and the rest of the drive is D. (this is on the kids PC, it's a long story) Can I use Disk Management to format D then make C bigger? Do I have to format D or can I just use the unused space to make C bigger?
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited February 2005
    If they are both NTFS and both dynamic volumes, you can extend logical volume C onto a second drive.
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited February 2005
    bothered wrote:
    OK. I have a small 5gig partition (C) and the rest of the drive is D. (this is on the kids PC, it's a long story) Can I use Disk Management to format D then make C bigger? Do I have to format D or can I just use the unused space to make C bigger?

    To extend the size of C: you need a partioning tool like Partition Magic. Just use the unused space to make c: whatever size you want.
    Tex
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited February 2005
    Bothered, easiest thing to do to get D smaller is this, with Partition Magic 8+:

    1. Shrink D, so it only occupies part of the extended partition encapsulating the logical drive D:. I would shrink toward part of disk displayed as away from C:.

    2. Shrink the Extended partition, now partially unused.

    3. Enlarge C: to fill the now empty space.

    With Partition Magic, you can set up the actions you want and then apply the changes and have it batch the whole thing inot one cohesive batch, or do each part as a single apply for each thing outlined above.

    OTOH, if you format, you will lose data in area formatted (where each area chunk is a logical drive). With PM, as Tex and I both mentioned, you can keep most (if not all) of your data and change things around.
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited February 2005
    I figured if he was willing to format D: anyway nothing important was there. Just delete it and enlarge C: then make a new D:

    I was assuming which often gets me in trouble ....(long sigh...) but figured the stuff on D: was backed up on his network and could be blown away.

    Tex
  • botheredbothered Manchester UK
    edited February 2005
    Thanks guys, you have given me the answers I needed. I don't mind formatting D as Tex said, it's been backed up anyway, but if I don't need to I may as well just move it.
    Thanks again.
  • MachineGunKellyMachineGunKelly The STICKS, Illinois
    edited February 2005
    mtgoat, I was under the impression that floppies could not be used in NTFS format (I have XP Home 'upgrade' and when things go BOOM I pop in the 98SE floppy and fdisk and re-format and then re-load XP). Therefore I choose to set the C: drives on my machines to Fat32 and the rest of the logical drives on the ext part's NTSF. Am I incorrect on that?

    Anyway, I got the thing partitioned with Disk Management. Really unbelievably easy!

    As Bothered was asking about it I need a little help with that as well as I am not fully understanding of it's capabilities yet. I am running out of space on C: as well (4 gigs, all used up by XP and SP2) and would like to 'extend' C into D with out having to re-format or lose all my data on the rest of the extended partition. I have mine set up like this: 40 gig hd = 4 gig C: (FULL), 11.4 gig D: ( 6 gig's free), 11.4 gig E: (2 gig's free)) and a 11.3 F: (archive, 1 gig free).
    Drive D: is a program and game drive so I can lose that and reinstall after. Can I just have Disk Manager extend C into D's territory a little without losing everything on the extended partition and without third party software ( I'm kinda broke!)? :scratch:
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited February 2005
    MachineGunKelly wrote:
    mtgoat, I was under the impression that floppies could not be used in NTFS format (I have XP Home 'upgrade' and when things go BOOM I pop in the 98SE floppy and fdisk and re-format and then re-load XP). Therefore I choose to set the C: drives on my machines to Fat32 and the rest of the logical drives on the ext part's NTSF. Am I incorrect on that?


    No never use fat32 for anything. It's uses are over unless you dual boot.

    You boot from the xp cd and partition and format from there. You never need a floppy to ever boot and if you don't need to enter raid drivers with f6 you can now disconnect the floppy drive from your machine to reduce the temptation.

    You need to flush all the old ways you are doing crap and learn the proper new way. Nothing from win98 applys anymore. Including fat32.

    And..... unless you need more then three partitions (and you shouldn't!) then you can just make three primary partitions. Your still living in a DOS world and we are trying to grab your feet and pull you into the XP world even though you are kicking and screaming bloody murder all the way it seems.

    (grin)

    Tex
  • MachineGunKellyMachineGunKelly The STICKS, Illinois
    edited February 2005
    Thanks for 'boot' in the arse!

    Will I lose my data doing what I asked?
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited February 2005
    It was a friendly boot for a longtime poster that just needed dragged into the current year. (grin)

    You need to do something along the lines of delete d: and then use Partition Magic to extend c: to consume the avaialable space after deleteing d:

    PM or email me if you need help finding software.

    There really isnt that many good reasons to cut a disk into a bunch of small drives anymore. As you just found out.

    You might check the internet temp and normal temp files for all users and you could maybe recover 2 to 5 gb of space if your lucky for now. you can also copy all your user files to another drive and map that back to your home directory if you want. I can always live in a 18gb OS partition but I map user files and temp and internet temp files to other drives so you hardly ever add stuff to the OS directory and it hardly ever gets fragmented.

    Cheers

    Tex
  • MachineGunKellyMachineGunKelly The STICKS, Illinois
    edited February 2005
    Yep. Done that already. I don't completely live in the stoneage. ;)

    Thanks for the help guys.
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