External Hard drive problem

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Newrotic

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Hi! Everybody, I need help!
I cannot partition my new USB Seagate 400Gb External hard drive using
Windows XP Computer Management facility. It is functioning perfectly but I
need to partition such a big drive.
Right clicking the drive in the Disk Management window only allows me the
opportunity to "delete partition...."
Both the "C" drive and external drive are in the NTFS format and the
indication is that they are "online" "healthy" and "active"
I have Partition Magic 6 but I understand that this could cause problems
with Windows XP.
Could anyone please help me with this situation?
Regards
Newrotic
 
Windows XP does not have a built in partition resizing tool. Partition Magic does do this, but you are correct - you do not want to use such an old version of Partition Magic on a Windows XP system. I believe there is a slight change in how NTFS is handled on XP from 2000 and Partition Magic won't handle it properly.

The good news is there is a free alternative. gParted will resize that partition for you and create new ones if you like. As always when dealing with partitions, make sure you have important data backed up first before proceeding.
 
Thanks for the useful info.
If you reckon gParted will safely do the trick I'll give it a try.
I'm only on dial-up at the moment so it will probably take a day to download.
Cheers
Newrotic
 
It will work, I think the gParted live cd is only 28.6 megs, that isn't too bad on dialup, much better than a full iso. If you really can't wait, you could reinstall XP (since you said its new, reinstalling might still be an option) and when you tell XP where to install to you can delete and create partitions of the size you want. So you can install XP to a 10 gig (or whatever size you want) partition and then choose appropriate sizes for the rest either during setup or later when in Windows.
 
To use XP Disk Management to create multiple partitions on your new external hard drive you need to delete the existing single partiton, once this has been done you will get the create new partition option ,with a big drive it may take a not inconsiderable time to complete the process

Cheers HSC
 
Which is not going to be possible in his case, because he has Windows on 1 big partition on his hard drive. The only way for him to do it is with a 3rd party utility, which I covered above.

Edit: Ignore this post, HSC was right.
 
Mmm that is odd I do not see anything in his post to say he has Windows installed on that external USB drive

Cheers HC
 
Ah, you are right. Sorry.

Well then, that changes things a bit. gParted may not even work because I'm not sure that deals with usb drives. But so long as he doesn't care about the data on it he can delete the partition and do it as you said.
 
No problem, I had to go back and read his post three times over to get it clear in my head exactly what he was trying to do

Cheers HSC
 
gParted doesn't support resizing NTFS partitions...

There are others that may though, such as Mandrake's partitioner.
 
Newrotic said:
I have Partition Magic 6 but I understand that this could cause problems with Windows XP.

.... And what museum did you steal that from? ;)
 
Well done HSC you've cracked it!
Disk Management assumed my new external drive was one big partition.

I deleted it and simply created the partitions I wanted.

It's so obvious now.

You've made an old bloke very happy.

Thanks a lot

Newrotic
 
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