Unable to partition....help

prithvi1989 · 22 Jun 2012

I recently bought s HP Pavillion g6 laptop with a 500GB HDD etc....The PC came to me with 2 partitions as default,ie C:\ and a Recovery drive.The C:\ has about 441GB.I tried partitioning it using Windows Disk Management.I got to the point of
shrinking the C: and having an Unallocated space of about 200gb.After that though i get all the prompts to create a New Simple Drive,it dosent work.I says that my OS dosent support dynamic drive etc....does anyone know how i can partition my C:....

thanks in advance...

Night Hawk · 22 Jun 2012

Hello pithvi1989 Welcome to SF!

The first basic mistake was trying to repartition the drive you are booted into as far as being in the OS installed on it! That goes into problems trying to shrink C too far depending on how much is on the drive and what amount of drive space is reserved by Windows for things like virtual memory and System Restore points as well as the volume information and Recycle Bin.

You certainly Do Not want any dynamic volume added on when going to shrink the C primary to split the drive up. There are a good number of free as well as paid for disk partitioning programs as well as the built in Disk Part tool. The best move however for resizing the C volume is being booted from a live cd several programs will offer where no Windows processes are loaded into memory at the time.

ignatzatsonic · 22 Jun 2012

Post a screen shot of Windows Disk Management so we can see what is going on.

Depending on what is in the picture, you may be able to use Disk Management to do what you need, or you may need to use a downloaded application such as Partition Wizard.

Regardless, you do NOT want dynamic disks.

Night Hawk · 22 Jun 2012

Lately I keep hearing more people running into the same problem with OEM machines when going to make any partition changes! I suspect the best option is to plan on using a 3rd party solution while booting live from cd since there won't be any OS involvement since no processes for Windows are loaded. The C volume is then unmounted and readily accessible to the program used.

gregrocker · 22 Jun 2012

We are waiting to see the Disk Mgmt screenshot requested. Use the Snipping Tool in Start Menu. Screenshots and Files - Upload and Post in Seven Forums - Windows 7 Forums

Most HP's already have the max 4 Primary partitions which is why you would be warned it wants to convert to Dynamic. Do not do this.

Instead the solution which has worked best is to convert C to Logical and then shrink it to add as many Logical co-partitions as you wish.

But we must see the Disk Mgmt screenshot first. so do that now.