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
| 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.
 |
Example Two
| 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.
 |
Example Three
| 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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