Help with partitions

Wimiw · 21 Sep 2010

Hi, I just bought a new PC with Windows 7 installed. I have 1 hard drive with 1 TB of space. The drive has been partitioned into 4 Primary partitions:

C: BOOT (primary) with 900 GB
D: RECOVERY (primary) with 30 GB
unnamed system partition (primary) with 100 MB
unnamed OEM partition (primary) with 1 GB

This means that all the programs that I will install as well as documents, pictures, downloads, etc. will all be put on the C drive. To avoid performance issues and disk cleanup issues, I would like to have an extended partition with several logical drives, so I can easily separate the data that I store on my pc.

How can I do that? Please help....
Thanks

JDobbsy1987 · 21 Sep 2010

Hi,

You should be able shrink the volume of the c: drive...

Click Start >> Right Click Computer >> Select Manage >> Click On Disk Management {bottom left} >> Right Click your C: drive and select shrink.

You will then be able choose how much you wish to shrink by which will in turn give you that much space unallocated, you can then right click the unallocated space an assign it a letter.

Regards,
JDobbsy1987

Wimiw · 21 Sep 2010

JDobbsy1987 said:

Hi,

You should be able shrink the volume of the c: drive...

Click Start >> Right Click Computer >> Select Manage >> Click On Disk Management {bottom left} >> Right Click your C: drive and select shrink.

You will then be able choose how much you wish to shrink by which will in turn give you that much space unallocated, you can then right click the unallocated space an assign it a letter.

Regards,
JDobbsy1987

Hi, thanks for your reply,
If I do what you suggest, then the system warns me that the selected discs(?) will become dynamic disks and that I won't be able to boot from them anymore. So I am reluctant to continue...

unifex · 21 Sep 2010

Alternatively, you can use MiniTool Partition Wizard. This is a free app that can manage partitions somewhat easier that the built-in Disk management tool.

But basically, you should indeed shrink the C:\ partition, then create a new partition in the free space. It might be a good idea to place your data there. I would not bother installing programs to a different partition, I keep them in C:\Program Files.

If you had two physical disks, then you could move your page file to the second disk, but there is no point in moving it to a different partition on the same disk, that would only slow you down.

I would also investigate further the unnamed 100 GB partition. What's the point of that? I also do have recovery and OEM, but your third item puzzles me.

myzr7 · 21 Sep 2010

Welcome to SevenForums.
While you are in your disk management window please take a snipping tool pic of it and post so we can see exactly what your config is and advise accordingly. Good luck to you with this endeavor.

Bare Foot Kid · 21 Sep 2010

Hello Wimiw, welcome to Seven Forums!

Will you please post a snip/screen-shot of the entire disk management drive map with a full description as to which drive/partition is which, so we can see what you have going on as there may be a fairly simple way to resolve the situation.

In the Windows start menu right click computer and click manage, in the left pane of the "Computer Management" window that opens click disk management and post a snip of that.

How to Upload and Post a Screenshot and File in Seven Forums

gregrocker · 21 Sep 2010

The other partitions are the 100mb System Reserved partition which is used to boot Win7, Recovery which you should make the Recov Disk set from now, and OEM tools which relate to your Factory Utilities.

As suggested, use free Partition Wizard bootable CD to shrink C and create/format Logical NTFS data partitions as desired in the space created.

Most tech enthusiasts eventually find a clean copy installer for their Win7 version to clean reinstall Win7 to get rid of the factory bloatware and partitions, which will activate with the Product Key on COA sticker. Let us know when you are ready to do that as we have specialists for that here.

whs · 21 Sep 2010

This is a very bad practice that the OEMs started with Win7 - allocating 4 primaries out of the box. The only thing you can do is to get rid of one of the partitions - the Tools and the Recovery (after burning the DVDs) are candidates. I would choose the recovery partition and make an initial image as extra safety (you never know whether those DVDs are any good).
Just make sure you do not fall into the Dynamic Paertition trap. That is not easy to correct.

Bare Foot Kid · 21 Sep 2010

gregrocker said:

As suggested, use free Partition Wizard bootable CD to shrink C and create/format Logical NTFS data partitions as desired in the space created.

Have a look at this tutorial at the link below.

Partition Wizard : Use the Bootable CD

Wimiw · 21 Sep 2010

Here it is:

Help with partitions

Help with partitions

Disk Manager