At one time, it was a practice of savvy computer users to separate their data from the operating system. This was done by using a separate hard drive or by creating another partition on their hard drive that functioned as another hard drive. When things went bad all important documents, pictures, music or whatever that were stored on the separate hard drive or partition were relatively safe. It was then only necessary to reinstall the operating system and a few programs to be back up and running again. This practice has seen less use over time due to changing file structures of the hard drives and increasing price of third party software capable of creating partitions on a drive without data loss. Unfortunately, the practice of data back up has also diminished. These factors combine to make data loss a certainty for many computer users.
The good news is that it is no longer necessary to buy a second hard drive or spring for a third party partition program that might only be used once during the life of your computer. This extra protection is available in Windows Vista, which has the new feature of creating partitions on a hard drive without data loss. With the increasing size of hard drives and partitioning capabilities built into the operating system, safety partitions should rapidly gain appeal.
The creation of one or more safety partitions is a fairly simple task, another factor that will increase their usage. Click the "Start Button" to open the Start Menu.
With the Start Menu open, right click on "Computer", which you will find in the right hand column. This opens a context menu on which you will need to left click the "Manage" selection. This will open the Computer Management Console.
Computer Management is a title that can be rather intimidating. If you look closely, it is similar to the Windows Explorer screen, the tree/folder view on the left side pane and the file/contents view in the center pane. The right hand pane provides access to functions and tasks. Since drive partitions are on our minds right now, left click the "Disk Management" entry listed under "Storage" in the left hand pane.
On clicking the indicated "Disk Management" selection, windows takes a few moments to gather the information on any drives installed on your system. When it has finished Windows changes the center pane to a text list of drives at the top and a graphical representation of the drives at the bottom. Either can be used to perform the next step.
Notice in the close up, that hard drives are referred to by drive number as well as by drive letter. Don't let that confuse you. Drive C and Drive 0 are the same physical drive on computers with a standard configuration. If you only have one hard drive, then it won't be hard to find even if your computer does have a non-standard configuration. With two or more drives, keep in mind the Windows Drive letter assignment of the drive you want to partition. In this case, we are planning to repartition Drive C. Find the drive letter of the drive you want to partition and right click it either in the list in the upper central pane or on the graphical representation in the lower center pane.
As is usual for most right clicks, a context menu opens up. On this menu we are going to left click the "Shrink Volume" selection. Although some computer manufacturers have been putting an operating system restore partition on their hard drives, it is still fairly common to see the active partition taking up all the available space on the drive. In either case, we need to make room for the new partition. This is done by re-allocating unused drive space in the active partition, hence the "Shrink Volume" selection. By the way, Volume and Partition are interchangeable terms.
The partition size selection dialog, shown here, opens when the "Shrink Volume" selection has been left clicked. This screen provides before and after shrink partition size details. The default amount of space to shrink is equal to the total amount of available shrink space. Due to existing files on your drive that are marked as "unmovable", the available shrink space shown will differ from the "free space" figure reported by Windows for this drive. The "amount of space to shrink" can be adjusted via the spin buttons next to the text box labeled "Enter the amount of space to shrink in MB:" or simply by typing in the desired size for the new partition. When this setting has been adjusted to your liking, left click the "Shrink" button at the bottom of the dialog box.
In a short time after clicking the "Shrink" button, the console window changes to reflect the shrink that was performed. This space is the Unallocated space indicated by arrow 1. Right click the Unallocated space then click the "New Simple Volume" selection on the resulting context menu as shown by arrow 2.
This results in starting the "Simple Volume Wizard" shown here. As with most Windows Wizards the first screen is basically a title screen. The only task here is to left click the "Next" button located at the bottom of the window.
The next window of the wizard is the "Specify Volume Size" screen. If you want to create more than one partition, this window allows you to adjust the size accordingly with the indicated spin buttons or by typing in the size you desire for the first new partition in the text box next to the spin buttons. Yes, there are those that create several partitions on their hard drives. There is a down side and a limit to this practice. With each partition you lose a bit of drive space, which is used in establishing the partition on the drive. Coupled with the space you lose to formatting this can add up to several gigabytes. As mentioned there is also a limit. Windows will only allow the creation of four partitions on a hard drive. As mentioned, some of the large manufacturers of computers create a partition for system restore purposes and some create another partition labeled EISA, which contains "utilities" and shows no drive letter making it a hidden partition. That makes a total of three partitions, leaving room for one more. One will be sufficient for the purpose of storing data. Once you have settled on the partition size, left click the "Next" button.
The next window you will see provides you with drive access options. For the purpose of a safety partition, the default "Assign the following drive letter" will do nicely. The other two options listed here result in partitions that do not act like separate physical drives. This being the case, left click the "Next" button to continue.
The next window of the New Simple Volume Wizard to appear is the Format Partition window. You can choose to format the partition later if you wish. Using this screen to format the partition saves a step. To format now, make sure the radio button at arrow 1 has been selected. Arrow 2 indicates the file system selector. The NTFS file system is recommended as FAT and FAT 32 file systems have received legacy status. Allocation unit size selection is at arrow 3. The default size is recommended. At arrow 4 is the text box with which you can give your new partition a label or leave the box blank for no label. The check box at arrow 5 specifies a quick format, however, it may be necessary to perform a full format when this wizard has finished. The full format process takes much longer to complete. If the quick format is performed successfully, then you have saved yourself an extra step or two and some time as well. Left click the "Next" button to proceed.
Next is the Completing the New Simple Volume Wizard screen. With this window you can review the selections you have made and if necessary use the "Back" button to return to any previous screen and make changes. When all is well, left click the "Finish" button.
The drive that Disk 1 in the illustration represents was originally partitioned with a much smaller drive (E:). Backup (D:) occupied approximately two thirds of the drive and included the shaded area which is now part of music(E:). I first shrank Backups(D:) to the size shown here. Then music(E:) was extended into the portion vacated by Backups(D:). Although the upper text listing shows music(E:) as a solid partition, the graphical representation illustrated makes it appear as though the physical drive has three partitions. If we do the math we find that 99.96 + 65.67 + 67.25 = 232.88. Only a slight difference from the 232.89 reported for Disk 1.
I must confess, this drive was being used the way it was with no thought of correcting it until rewriting this article. First all the data was moved from the Music(E:) partition to the other drive. With the data safely stored elsewhere, the Music(E:) partition was removed entirely via the right click menu selection "Delete Volume". This is the same menu shown earlier which contained the "Shrink Volume" command. With the New Simple Volume Wizard, this unallocated space was then used to create a new partition. Now the two partition sizes add up to the 232.89 GB reported for Disk 1.
The point of these last few paragraphs is to warn those who may have become accustomed to partitioning their drives with third party partition software. While this Vista utility is handy and does get the job done, it does not perform required tasks automatically. It only does what you tell it to do. The partitioning software we used prior to Windows Vista would have automatically removed the old partition boundaries while resizing the partitions. Hopefully, someone will learn from our mistakes.
Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Windows, Windows XP and Windows Vista are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Other names have been included in the above text that are trademarks of the respective companies.
