Why would anyone start futzing with their PC if the machine is working OK? Two reasons: to make it safer and to make it faster. Dividing your hard drive into multiple partitions accomplishes both. By separating your applications and data from Windows' system files, you speed your backups and protect your files and programs from being wiped out if Windows conks out.
Windows Vista lets you create new partitions (which it calls "volumes") quickly and simply via the Disk Management utility. Unfortunately, the only quick and simple way to partition a hard drive in XP is to use a third-party partitioning program such as Symantec's $70 Norton PartitionMagic or Acronis's $50 Disk Director. A free alternative is Andy McLaughlin's Partition Logic.
To create new drive volumes in Vista, press the Windows key, type diskmgmt.msc, and press Enter to open the Disk management utility. Right-click one of the existing volumes and choose Shrink Volume. A window opens showing the amount of space in the volume, and the amount available for a new partition. The next field in the dialog box lets you choose how much space to allot to the new volume. The last field indicates the size of the original volume after the shrink.
Right-click a volume in Vista's Disk Management utility and choose Shrink Volume to create a new volume for your applications and data.
After you select the volume size, click Shrink. Now right-click the new volume and choose New Simple Volume. Step through the wizard to select the volume size and its drive-letter designation, which Vista assigns automatically based on the letters currently being used. If you expect to add new storage devices, select a letter further down the alphabet to avoid potential conflicts in the future. You'll also select the file system to use (I recommend NTFS, unless you want to use the volume for older apps), and give it a name.
When you've made your selections, you'll see a summary of your choices. If you're happy with them, click Finish to begin formatting the volume. When the formatting is complete, an Explorer window will open with the volume selected. Relocate your favorite programs and data files to this volume, and set your backup program to duplicate this volume rather than the main (likely C:) drive, which holds all of your system files, which change much less frequently. Of course, you'll still want to back up your entire system three or four times a year--or more or less frequently, depending on how much confidence you have in your PC's stability.
A note on repartitioning XP
I have an ancient laptop whose battery gave up the ghost months ago, so it works only when plugged in. For no apparent reason, I decided to repartition the machine's drive following Microsoft's instructions for doing so in Windows XP, which entails a complete reinstallation of the operating system. I'm happy to report that I succeeded in creating two 15GB partitions on the notebook's 30GB drive during the reinstallation, and the machine is working relatively well.
All it took was about six hours of my time: about an hour for the initial OS installation, and five more to download and install the 100 or so updates XP required. I counted eight restarts during the process: every time I thought I was done and returned to the Windows Update site just to make sure, I was hit with more "required" updates (getting IE7 on the system took about an hour and a couple of restarts all by itself). Much easier to go with a third-party disk-partitioning utility, I think, but an interesting academic exercise just the same.
Tomorrow: Convert a Word document into a Powerpoint presentation.
Once again, Walter Mossberg has offered incomplete and potentially dangerous computer advice in The Wall Street Journal. The December 6, 2007 edition of Mossberg's Mailbox had a question from someone whose lone hard disk was divided into two partitions; a small C disk that was almost full and a large D disk with lots of available space. The questioner asked about merging the two partitions together. Mr. Mossberg said that Partition Magic can be used for this purpose and that it "works well."
It is malpractice to suggest changing partitions in any way shape or form without first making a disk image backup. When things go wrong, as they inevitably do, you can lose access to all the files in a partition.
I jumped on the Partition Magic bandwagon early. In the late 1990s, before the availability of virtual machines on PCs, we used it in an R&D lab to run multiple operating systems on a single computer. For years I have used it on my personal machines for a host of reasons.
Partition Magic has its fair share of quirks and problems, not the least of which is that it appears to have been abandoned by Symantec. The Partition Magic gripes at my computergripes.com site are consistently the most popular topic on the site.
Among the operations that can be performed on partitions, combining two of them is perhaps the most dangerous. It is more complex than resizing a single partition and is a relatively new feature. Personally, I never attempted it, both because of the risk and because there are other ways to accomplish the same thing.
In this case, I would shrink the D partition to the minimum allowable size (plus a small fudge factor for good luck), then enlarge the C partition to include the space just given up by the D partition.* Next, I would copy all the files from D to C, then wipe out the D partition and, finally, expand the C partition so that it takes up the whole hard disk.
But, before combining partitions, I would look to avoid the whole thing by moving files from the C disk/partition to the D disk/partition.
Some of the poorly chosen Windows defaults that I mentioned last time, can be tweaked to free up space. For example, the Recycle Bin defaults to 10 percent of the partition in Windows XP and System Restore claims 12 percent by default. The minimum for System Restore in XP is 200 megabytes, give it 300 or 400 and you will probably reclaim many gigabytes. Internet Explorer also consumes large quantities of hard disk space. I doubt you will notice any change if you limit the IE cache to 30 or 40 megabytes.
Windows Update creates folders in the C:\Windows folder with names like $NtUninstallKBxxxxxx$. The total uncompressed size of these folders was 245MB, 285MB and 536MB on three different Windows XP machines that I checked. These folders can be moved out of the C disk/partition, as they are used only to uninstall bug fixes. If there is a large collection of pictures, music and/or videos, they can certainly be moved to free up space. Finally, there is the Disk Cleanup feature of XP that exists for just this purpose (get the Properties of the C disk, it's a button on the General tab).
Partition Magic is also expensive. Similar software, GParted, is available for free in Linux (download from CNET Download.com or see sample screenshots). You can boot your computer using a Linux Live CD and run GParted that way. I have done this with Ubuntu and Knoppix but many other Linux versions/distributions also include partitioning software.
You don't read PC magazine for mutual fund advice and you shouldn't read The Wall Street Journal for computer advice.
* I'm simplifying things a bit. There is actually another necessary step: after shrinking the D partition, it has to be moved to the right before the C partition can be be expanded. Also, if after this shrink/resize operation all the files from the D partition don't fit onto the C partition, then another round of shrink/resize would be needed. Backup, backup, backup.
See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.
A Linux kernel programmer has got Linux running on a logical domain, Sun Microsystems' term for an operating system partition on its newer UltraSparc-based servers.
"I just recently finished writing preliminary support for Linux to run as a guest under Sun LDoms," said programmer David Miller in a blog posting Wednesday.
Sun servers can be sliced into smaller pieces in a variety of ways. First came hardware partitions, which electrically isolated groups of processors so separate operating systems could run on each. Next came containers, which are independent slices of a single instance of Sun's Solaris operating system. Sun's newest partitioning technology, the intermediate-level logical domains (LDoms), lets as many as 32 operating systems run atop a single UltraSparc T1 processor.
The software is still raw, though.
"Things are in a bit of a rough state, but you can play around with installing a basic Linux guest with Solaris running the control node. There is a lot of missing functionality, and several major problems to resolve," Miller said.
Sun is trying to encourage the development of Linux on its newer Sparc-based servers, but Solaris remains the company's primary operating system focus.
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