Solved Can't Create a Primary Partition in 7

[CastorTroy11]

I really can't believe I have been trying to do this all day.

Anyway, I'm trying to partition my c drive to create another primary partition to dual boot with XP or Vista, and then eventually create another primary for the other OS.

But first things first. With Disk Management, I shrink the the c drive(over 200 gb) by about 25 gigs. I use that unallocated space to create a simple drive...just as the tutorial on this site explains. But it always comes up as a logical drive.

DM shows that I have 3 drives: a recovery(not primary), reserved(primary), and c(primary).

I used cmd to go into diskpart and create a raw primary, but it says I only have 100mb available and cannot create another primary. What's that all about?

Any help on this situation would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Dwarf]

Hi CastorTroy11 and welcome to W7 Forums

Can you post a snip showing the layout of the drive in Disk Management?

 

[Dwarf]

Did you try the following steps?

Firstly, shrink C. Use METHOD TWO here: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2672-partition-volume-shrink.html

Next, create a primary partition in the newly-created unallocated space. Again use OPTION TWO here: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2674-partition-volume-create-new.html

 

[CastorTroy11]

It didn't work. It says that I only have 1 mb left. So it partitions the drive, but it is too small to format.

 

[pbcopter]

Whats worng with a logical drive?
You can install an operating system and boot to it as long as the boot record is on a primary drive, in this case the System Reserved partition.

 

[CastorTroy11]

Whats worng with a logical drive?
You can install an operating system and boot to it as long as the boot record is on a primary drive, in this case the System Reserved partition.

I don't have any idea how to do that. Plus, why does it say that I only have 1 mb of free space.

 

[gregrocker]

Use free Partition Wizard bootable CD which will allow you to make a 4th Primary Partition and shrink more since System Files will not be running.

But I would consider making it Logical so you have the ability to add additional sub-partitions to the Logical Extended base partition. If you make it Primary you'll be stuck with just four.

As stated you can install your second OS to the Logical partition. It will place the boot files on the System Reserved boot partition and configure a Dual Boot if Vista or Win7. To Dual Boot with XP, follow this tutorial: Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and XP

 

[dsperber]

I don't have any idea how to do that. Plus, why does it say that I only have 1 mb of free space.

Should be very easy to solve your problem, if only we could see a screenshot of your hard drive from DISKMGMT.MSC.

Please post a screenshot, maximizing the DISKMGMT window and spreading the columns in the upper area so that we can see all the text in each column. We really do need to see a picture of your hard drive(s), to help you out properly and correctly.


Not that in addition to using DISKPART and DISKMGMT to work on partitions, there are also fine 3rd-party tools (such as Partition Wizard) which greatly simplify these tasks with an easy-to-use and intuitive and colorized GUI interface.

I personally feel Partition Wizard to be much more user-friendly and understandable than the native tools within Win7, and use it exclusively (i.e. 100%) for my partitioning needs.

I recommend that in anticipation of your possible use of Partition Wizard, that you download and install the Win7 version which runs under Win7.

Also, you should download and burn the ISO for Partition Wizard standalone bootable CD, which you need to use when working on your Windows partition resizing and other special case situations which cannot be completed while Win7 is up and running.


Please post that requested screenshot from DISKMGMT.

 

[CastorTroy11]

Awesome, I got.

Thanks for everyones help