Can I partition after installation?

[rbico]

I am helping a friend out with his new HP that he just bought. It comes with a 1TB hard drive and windows 7 home 64 bit. Since it is an HP and the OS and various HP programs are loaded on it already, is there a way to partition the HDD now so that my friend can keep part of the drive isolated for programs and the OS and use the rest for files?

thanks!

 

[Arc]

Yes, you can do it, but under certain condition. There must not be more than four primary partitions in a disk. otherwise it will be converted to dynamic , and you will not be able to boot from it.

Can you post a screenshot of your fullscreen disk management window, so that we can judge the situation ?

 

[rbico]

I will but I have not even taken it out of the HP box yet. it will probably be tomorrow.

thanks for your help.

 

[gregrocker]

Most HP's use up all four Primary partitions for Recovery, Tools, System Reserved and OS.

If this is the case the best path forward is to boot free Partition Wizard bootable CD
to convert C to Logical, then Resize it as desired to create an adjacent Logical data partition.

Be sure to make your Recovery Disks first: HP Recover Windows 7 Operating System Using HP Recovery - HP Customer Care (United States - English)

Since HP has the worst load of bloatware and useless factory utilties in the industry, you may also wish to Clean Up Factory Bloatware.

 

[rbico]

awesome. I called HP and they said I could partition it even if all of that crap is on there. Of course they once gave me a product ID for a SATA cable and told me it was my HDD,s o who knows.

But thanks for the info. Sounds like I can do what I want. And thanks for the bloatware info. I know HP loads tons of junk on there and cleaning that out was also on my list.

 

[rbico]

after taking a quick look at the bloatware info, is MS essentials and their firewall enough? So I wouldn't need Avast or avira avg, etc?

 

[karlsnooks]

rbico,
As mentioned by Greg, HP is the worst when it comes to bloatware and also using up all paritions.

My preferred approach with HP is to yes, first make the recovery discs in case you ever need to return the unit, then to:
1. boot from a normal Win 7 DVD,
2. Use Shift+F10 at the very first dialog you see. This will take you to a command prompt.
3. At the command prompt use DiskPart to wipe the disk clean
4. Now continue with the install.
5. After the install, update, and if you so desire you can go to the HP site and download any drivers that you think you need. I've never had an HP system not work just fine with the drivers supplied by Microsoft.

[FONT=&quot]CLEAN A HARD DISK PRIOR TO WINDOWS 7 INSTALL USING YOUR WINDOWS 7 DVD[/FONT]​

TURN OFF THE COMPUTER WITH THE DVD TRAY OPEN
Ø Turn on your computer.
Ø Open the DVD door.
Ø Turn off the computer with the DVD door open.

BOOT FROM YOUR WINDOWS 7 DVD AND GO TO A COMMAND PROMPT
Ø Insert the Windows 7 DVD and close the DVD door.
Ø Power on your computer.
Ø When that very first dialog appears where you would normally push the NEXT button, then use the SHIFT + F10 key combo to get to a command prompt.
Ø The command prompt will be X:>


USE THE DISKPART PROGRAM TO “CLEAN” THE HARD DISK
Type the commands shown, hitting the Enter key after each.

Do not proceed to the next command until the current command is finished.

· DISKPART (the command prompt will change to DISKPART>)
· LIST DISK (this will list the disks present)
· SELECT DISK 0 (assuming disk zero is the desired hard disk)
· DETAIL DISK (this will show you info regarding the disk you selected)
· CLEAN ALL (this is the command to write zeros to entire disk)
This can take half a day for a 2 Terabyte disk.
· EXIT(this will exit you from the DiskPart program)
· EXIT(this will exit you back to the Windows 7 install program)

=========================================================

Now, you will be able to partition using DiskManagement or using PartitionWizard Free download Magic Partition Manager Software, partition magic alternative, free partition magic, partition magic Windows 7 and server partition software - Partition Wizard Online

 

[karlsnooks]

after taking a quick look at the bloatware info, is MS essentials and their firewall enough? So I wouldn't need Avast or avira avg, etc?

No, you will NOT need them. MSE, Microsoft Security Essentials, is all you need.

 

[gregrocker]

I should have added that most tech enthusiasts as engaged as you already are will not run the bloated preinstall but instead Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7. Read the special notes for HP users.

You can wait until you see how cleaning it up works.

 

[rbico]

I woud love to do a full re-install of windows 7, but I have only one day and I have to swap out an old HDD from his old PC and transfer and setup all of his oultook, firefox, quickbooks and stuff like that. I may only be able to do a de-bloating.

 

[rbico]

thanks for all of your help. Due to time constraints, I ended up just de-bloating the HP stuff. With the exception of a few driver issues for some older peripherals, everything went great.

For the partitioning, I just right-clicked on the C drive (in disk management) and selected shrink. I set it at about 250 GB and that left a separate partition for around 650GB. I assigned a drive letter to that and was ready to go. I can't remember where I found how to do that, but it worked great.

 

[gregrocker]

Hopefully you didn't convert to Dynamic disk because you already had four primary partitions. To avoid this it's best to make the fourth partition Logical using free Partition Wizard bootable CD. If you already have four then you can convert C to Logical, shrink it to add as many logical sub-partitions as you wish.

Video help on how to set partition as Primary or Logical.

 

[rbico]

Hopefully you didn't convert to Dynamic disk because you already had four primary partitions. To avoid this it's best to make the fourth partition Logical using free Partition Wizard bootable CD. If you already have four then you can convert C to Logical, shrink it to add as many logical sub-partitions as you wish.

Video help on how to set partition as Primary or Logical.

there weren't 4 partitions, there were only 2; 1 for the main drive and 1 for the HP restore stuff. And I didn't make the 3rd (new) partition dynamic.

 

[gregrocker]

Good. The reason I asked is that most HP's already have four Primary: System Reserved, C, Recovery and Tools (Diagnostics able to run from boot, or from OS until reinstalled).

You must have reinstalled at some point or deleted some. Does your Recovery partition even run if triggered from boot? HP Recover Windows 7 Operating System Using HP Recovery - HP Customer Care (United States - English)

If so I'd make your Recovery disks now as a backup. If not you can delete and Recover the HD space.