Partitioning A Hard Drive During the XP Installation
Process
Boot
the computer with the XP CD in the drive and allow setup to begin.
When the screen appears showing the existing partitions and
unpartitioned space available on the computer you should see a drive
listed in the lower portion of the screen. Beneath the drive you'll
see one of two things; if the drive has not been partitioned it
should say Unpartitioned Space and list the size of the drive, or if
the drive has been partitioned previously it should list the drive
letter, the size of the drive and the amount of space free on the
drive. with all the space listed as unpartitioned. See Fig. 01
below.
Fig. 01
If the drive
was in use previously you'll see all the partitions listed
that are currently on the drive. To delete all the existing
partitions hit the 'D' key followed by the 'L'
key. The screen instructions will be visible to guide the
process. Remember that deleting the partitions destroys all
the data with no chance of recovery. Once all the existing
partitions are deleted the display will show the total
unpartitioned disk space, the same as shown in Fig. 01.
Creating a partition on the drive can take one of two paths.
If you only want one partition then hit enter and the entire disk
space will be allocated to a single partition and you'll be taken to
a screen where you select a file system. However, if you want to
createone partition of a specific size or several different
partitions then do not
hit the Enter key. Instead, hit the 'C' key to create a
partition as shown in Fig. 02 . Hit 'Backspace' until the
cursor moves to the first digit location. Enter the size of the
first partition to be created. Repeat the create partition process
as many times as you want until either the desired number of
partitions has been created or all available drive space is
allocated to partitions.
Fig. 02
Once all the
partitions have been created, use the 'Up' arrow key
to select the C drive partition and press the 'Enter'
key to install XP to the partition. Before the install
actually begins you'll see the screen shown in Fig. 03
below. It's necessary to choose a file system and format the
partition before the installation can proceed.
A
discussion of FAT32 versus NTFS is available
here.
Fig. 03
Once the
file system has been selected the partition will be
formatted and the installation will complete. After XP has
been installed and is running, navigate to Disk Management
to see a graphical representation of what has been
accomplished using the built in disk partitioning utility
that's included on the XP installation CD. A few examples
with an explanation of each are shown below.
Example
One
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This partitioning
scheme illustrates what happens if you hit
the 'Enter' key as shown in Fig. 01 above.
The entire Disk 0 is partitioned as a
primary partition and given the drive letter
C. In this example I selected the FAT32 file
system but it could have just as easily been
NTFS by making a different selection in Fig.
03.
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Example Two
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This partitioning
scheme illustrates one possibility if you
hit the 'C' key as shown in Fig. 01 above.
In this example I created a single partition
and specified the size to be 4000MB. Rather
than using the entire Disk 0, only 4000MB of
Disk 0 is partitioned as a primary partition
and given the drive letter C. In this
example I selected the NTFS file system but
it could have just as easily been FAT32 by
making a different selection in Fig. 03. The
remainder of the space on Disk 0 not being
used on the drive is shown as Unallocated.
At a later time it can be partitioned,
formatted, and assigned drive letters for
use.
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Example Three
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This partitioning
scheme illustrates another possibility if
you hit the 'C' key as shown in Fig. 01
above. In this example I first created a
single partition and specified the size to
be 2000MB. Rather than using the entire Disk
0, only 2000MB of Disk 0 is partitioned as a
primary partition and given the drive letter
C. In this example I selected the NTFS file
system but it could have just as easily been
FAT32 by making a different selection in
Fig. 03.
Rather than leave the
remainder of the space on Disk 0 as Unallocated
as I did in Example Two, I then repeated the
partitioning process (using the 'C' key as shown
in Fig. 01 above) five more times, each cycle
creating an additional 2000MB partition. After
all the partitions were created there is still
933 MB of unused space. Since the 933 MB are a
part of the extended partition it's listed as
free space rather than unallocated space.
If you read previous sections
of this article you may remember that a single
hard disk, such as Disk 0 in this example, can
contain up to four primary partitions or three
primary partitions and one extended partition.
One of the limitations of using the setup
partitioning method is that any additional
partitions created after the first primary
partition will be logical drives and placed
within an extended partition.
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A final note for this
section. While you 'can' use the setup partitioning utility
for some tasks during the
installation of XP, the utility is rather limited in scope.
My experience has been that it is best suited for setting up
a basic partition like the one shown in Example Two.
Allocate sufficient space to the one primary partition that
will hold the operating system and leave the remaining space
unallocated. After the installation is complete you can use
Disk Management or other third party partitioning tools to
further develop a partitioning scheme that is better suited
to your individual needs.
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