Ways for Creating and Adjusting internal and external Hard-disk Partitions ... EASILY! (Defragment first)

A hard disk partition is a divide, or divides, made on one physical hard drive. If you are using windows, chances are that you have your C: drive partition for Windows and probably a D: for backing up or files. You may have have less than this, or far far more.

The great thing about partitions is that you can use them for keeping files separate from your system (in case you need to format/reinstall the system), you can have partitions for multiple systems (like Windows and Linux side-by-side) and partitions help to keep things organized. Moreover, especially with FAT or NTFS partitions (Windows), partitioning the drive makes defraging it a quicker task ... imagine how long a 1 terabit drive would take to defragment in one session! ... hours.

Partitioning a hard disk is a difficult and worrying process, especially if you have lots of data stored on the drive. It is always best if you backup all your data before you start partitioning your drives, as with anything computer related, things can sometimes go unexpectedly wrong.

For years I had problems any time I wanted to partition my hard disk! The main reason being is that most programs install into Windows, but then Windows would 'protect itself' by not allowing them to have full access to the hard disk. This is not the case however with Parted Magic.

Parted Magic is a free Linux CD that boots up from either a CD or USB. All you do is download the .ISO file and burn it to an available CD, or install it onto a USB flash-drive (free programs to do this are also on download.com). You then put that CD and restart your computer. It should then automatically boot up from the CD or USB. If this doesn't happen, you may need to change your 'boot up order' (the order in which you computer checks for boot-able devices) in you BIOS. However, for newer computers, this is normally not required.

Once the system has booted up fully from your CD/USB, you will be presented with a clean and simple menu system, which is actually very similar to that of Windows. Although this system can do far more than just partitioning hard disks, for today you will just use the program called Gparted. Once opened, you will be given a graphical display of your hard disks layout, along with a list of partitions. You can click on any of the partitions to highlight it and then select to adjust, delete or format it.

To adjust a partition, you will be given a new window, where you can actually drag the sides to shrink or enlarge the partition and (if there is unused space) you can even drag the entire partition to a new spot, then select the format (if needed) or just leave the system as it is. If the hard disk has an empty area, you just click on create partition and pick from the menu what you would like (size, format etc). Everything you do at this stage is in a virtual form ... until you click the 'Apply Changes' button. Please check before you click to apply changes that you are very sure that everything is now how you want it, as depending on the size of the drive, this could take from a matter of minutes, up to many hours!

Once finished, all you do is shutdown the computer (it will ask you to remove the CD) and then restart. Everything should have gone well and you should now be presented with a cleanly partition hard drive (and all you files should be preserved - so long as you didn't choose to format or delete a partition).

I have used this technique many times, even for moving partitions FULL of files and so far it has been an error free partitioning process for me (although, obviously that is not guaranteed). I hope the same experience will be shared by you.

TIP - If you are going to move or resize a drive with lots of files, it is always a good idea to de-fragment the partition/drive before proceeding with making any changes.

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