Activate unused partitions on hard drive

jakebrown5jakebrown5
edited March 2004 in Hardware
Hello, I have a WD 15GB hard drive. I am only using about 50% of it, with one active partition with a size of 8GB. I am wondering if there is a way to unlcok the remaining unused portion of my hard drive. Is this possible? Is there a program that can do this for me? The data I have already on my hard drive is important and I don't want to lose it, but yet I also want that extra space on my hard drive.

Any help would be appreciated,
Jake

Comments

  • kanezfankanezfan sunny south florida Icrontian
    edited March 2004
    absolutely. if you're using win98, then you need to create a boot disk, boot off of it, then type in fdisk at the command prompt. you can then create a new partition. once you boot back into win98, you can then format the new partition.

    if you're using winxp, you go to control panel, admin tools, computer management. then go to disk management. you'll see the extra unpartioned space there. right click it, then you'll see an option to create a partition. just follow the promts to finish it and format it. pretty easy.
  • jakebrown5jakebrown5
    edited March 2004
    Yes I know how to do that, but if I create a new partition will it delete all of my data that was on my hard drive? My question was how do I use the remaining portion of my hard drive, but without overwriting any data? I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. I knew I could go into fdisk and create a new partition that uses 100% of the drive, but I was afraid that by doing that I would erase everything that was on my original partition. Make more sense now?
  • kanezfankanezfan sunny south florida Icrontian
    edited March 2004
    no you won't. as long as you don't delete or format your existing partition, you'll be fine. of course if you stuff that's very important on your partition, you should back it up just in case, but as long as you don't go in and delete or format your partition, you'll be fine. just create a new one and format it.
  • jakebrown5jakebrown5
    edited March 2004
    So I backup all of my files (just in case), boot up FDISK, then what? I can't create a new partition that is 100% without deleting my old one, can I? And then you said to format it.............. like FORMAT C:? that will definitely erase all of my data. I'm confused as you can see. I'm not very computer savvy.
  • kanezfankanezfan sunny south florida Icrontian
    edited March 2004
    ok hold on.... you can create ANOTHER partition, so you will end up with a c: and a d: drive. or if you want your c: partition to go form 8gb to 15gb, you'll need something like Partition Magic to expand it for you. there is a linux tool you can use to do it too, but (i'm not trying to make fun of you) it doens't sound like you're ready for something like that. besides i'm pretty sure the partition magic demo works, it's not crippled.
  • jakebrown5jakebrown5
    edited March 2004
    Yes Partition Magic sounds great, except I can't find it. I found one version, but it is completely disabled. I can't do anything. Do you know where I can download a different version or something?
  • kanezfankanezfan sunny south florida Icrontian
    edited March 2004
    you've got a PM
  • jakebrown5jakebrown5
    edited March 2004
    Nevermind, I found the Partition Magic 7.0 Demo. The program does not work, but it includes a DOS Boot Disk creator. I created one, and I was able to resize my partition through that boot disk. It worked great! :jelly:
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