PartitionFilter: I just got a new machine with Windows Vista with a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it comes out. I'm planning on doing a fresh installation of Windows 7 when I get it, but in the meantime I'd like to get settled in Windows Vista. Is there a good strategy to partitioning the 640GB HD so I can migrate with ease? Was thinking of having two partitions, one for OS, one for Program Data / Storage, and then wiping the OS partition when Windows 7 comes through. Advice?
posted by miasma on Oct 7, 2009 - 7 answers

Is there any speed advantage to partitioning a 1 TB hard drive? I plan on using it as an NTFS drive in Windows XP SP3. It's primary purpose will be mass storage for my pictures and media so it will be read a lot. My OS and Program Files reside on another physical drive.
posted by patrad on Aug 14, 2009 - 17 answers

What the heck is going on with this laptop as I reformat and set it up to dual boot? [more inside]
posted by TomMelee on Jul 11, 2009 - 13 answers

Whats the Difference between a file system and a partition in Ubuntu? [more inside]
posted by complience on Feb 25, 2009 - 13 answers

Partition trouble: I'm trying to shrink my C drive so that I can install the Win7 beta on another partition--problem is, it won't shrink right. [more inside]
posted by pandemic on Jan 11, 2009 - 12 answers

Help me get my OSX back! Ubuntu/Mac questions inside. [more inside]
posted by war wrath of wraith on Jan 9, 2009 - 8 answers

Victorian house construction/DIY: building a wall in a shared loft (attic). 'What's this thing?' and 'Am I doing it right?' [more inside]
posted by boosh on Jan 1, 2009 - 7 answers

I have an Intel iMac, and have partitioned off a Boot Camp drive that contains Windows XP. Is there any way to restart the computer into Windows without having to hold down the Alt key? [more inside]
posted by zardoz on Dec 31, 2008 - 12 answers

A partition on my secondary hard drive disappeared over the weekend. Am I screwed? [more inside]
posted by mr_felix_t_cat on Dec 28, 2008 - 6 answers

Had a motherboard failure and it affected the hard drive. Big partition is missing and the drive is displayed as much smaller than it actually is. I don't care about the data, but I'd like to use the hard drive again at its normal capacity. [more inside]
posted by Mayor Curley on Oct 2, 2008 - 3 answers

I started with XP. Installed vista. Then I could choose between XP and Vista. I'm not using XP any more. Can I just delete the XP partition? [more inside]
posted by gergtreble on Sep 1, 2008 - 7 answers

Great MeFites, I come bearing but a humble request. I bought a MacBook Pro about six months before Leopard was released. When it finally came out, I installed it on a partition on an external drive, which I would boot from (because OS X is awesome like that, amirite?) so I could test out all my apps. Now I'm ready to commit to Leopard full-time - what's the best way to go about transplanting my Leopard partition? [more inside]
posted by indiewizard on Aug 18, 2008 - 6 answers

First time with formatting partitions or installing linux. [more inside]
posted by thatguyryan on Jun 22, 2008 - 4 answers

Is it possible to reinstall Windows XP on a small partition (~20 GB) of a single 300 GB hard drive? [more inside]
posted by Nelsormensch on Jun 7, 2008 - 10 answers

How to dual boot vista/ubuntu hardy heron and get everything set up. More details Inside. Starting to pull hair out :( [more inside]
posted by thesonofmorgoth on May 24, 2008 - 14 answers

Ubuntu/Vista Dual Boot With a Twist! - Virtual PC in ubuntu booting existing Windows Partition? [more inside]
posted by Javed_Ahamed on May 9, 2008 - 8 answers

Oh crap! While attempting to clear, reformat, and merge my ubuntu partition with my primary NTFS Windows partition, I somehow managed to give the GRUB boot-loader brain damage. Now I can't boot in to either partition need to fix this before my girlfriend comes home and sees that I've rendered her computer useless. [more inside]
posted by willie11 on Feb 27, 2008 - 6 answers

The disk in my MBP was upgraded from 100GB to 250GB. They used a hardware disk to disk copier that just cloned the drive, bit for bit. Now, I want to grow my 100GB partition to fill up the new space, however Disk Utility only sees the drive as 100GB. I know there are some $100 utilities out there, but I am a geek and want to do it for free. [more inside]
posted by dhammala on Jan 15, 2008 - 17 answers

I have one computer and two hard drives. I'd like to emulate 2 completely separate computers. That is, each hard drive will have a separate Windows XP image and I will choose at startup which one to boot. OK so far, but, I do not want either Win XP image to ever see or interact with the other one in any way. If I am running from one hard drive, I want the other one to be completely invisible. Possible? [more inside]
posted by DarkForest on Aug 17, 2007 - 34 answers

Where can I find big partitions/doors/walls that I've seen used in lofts? I'm looking for those with heavy-duty wheels (?) that run along tracks. I want to be able to partition my messy office from the living area, but have the flexibility to roll the wall/door out of the way.
posted by Smalltown Girl on Jul 4, 2007 - 10 answers

I accidentally formatted my NTFS drive with HFS and wrote some data on it. Now how do I recover whatever is left? >>>Any filesystem experts around here? [more inside]
posted by oneous on Apr 26, 2007 - 6 answers

An unlucky series of partition moves, copies and resizes has led to GPartEd saying my NTFS partition is one size, but windows thinking it's another. What the Christ? Seemingly impossible screenshots and [more inside]
posted by datacenter refugee on Apr 22, 2007 - 9 answers

I just installed Ubuntu on a new laptop, and now I can't boot into Vista. [more inside]
posted by punishinglemur on Mar 19, 2007 - 18 answers

I can't access 300 GBs of personal files on my external hard drive due to a file corruption. Is it possible to salvage the data? [more inside]
posted by Mach3avelli on Mar 13, 2007 - 9 answers

How do I check the creation date of a partition in windows server 2003? [more inside]
posted by Ezrie on Jan 8, 2007 - 5 answers

I’ve got a new 400gb drive heading my way, plus a free copy of Vista. What is the best way to rebuild my system, with XP, Vista sharing files etc. with maybe a little Ubuntu thrown in? There’s [more inside]
posted by nazca on Dec 18, 2006 - 7 answers

How should I partition my Powerbook's 40GB disk now so that can install Linux later? [more inside]
posted by Utilitaritron on Oct 16, 2006 - 7 answers

Help me make my choice from one of the three options below: 1) Fix Windows so that it boots without messing up my Ubuntu. 2) Remove Windows completely. I don't need it anyways. 3) Shrink Windows to the bare minimum and reclaim the space with Ubuntu. [more inside]
posted by furtive on Aug 28, 2006 - 7 answers

While trying to install Ubuntu Linux, I used their installer's included partitioner(gparted) to try to resize my NTFS windows XP partition. In doing so I ran afoul of this bug. [more inside]
posted by apathy0o0 on Aug 5, 2006 - 5 answers

Is it possible to partition a hard drive without reinstalling windows or formatting the drive? I have a 60 gig HD and would like to partition part of it to install ubuntu linux on. [more inside]
posted by nosophoros on May 9, 2006 - 9 answers

Can you reformat part of a partitioned hard drive without erasing the contents of the other partitions? [more inside]
posted by mert on May 7, 2006 - 12 answers

How do you setup/organize your Moleskine? [more inside]
posted by kevin_2864212 on Mar 2, 2006 - 23 answers

Unpartition my HDD is it possible, without reformatting? [more inside]
posted by kevin_2864212 on Feb 22, 2006 - 9 answers

I'm trying to boot the Mac OS X Intel installer CD from a hard drive partition (I have no DVD drive). I used dd to write the ISO to /dev/sda6, and I configured grub to boot from it. But grub won't boot it. [more inside]
posted by jbb7 on Jan 5, 2006 - 5 answers

please help a mac user format a hard drive using windows. [more inside]
posted by Silky Slim on Sep 9, 2005 - 2 answers

Help me defrag my hard drive! I haven't defragmented it in a long time, and now it just won't work. [more inside]
posted by MrZero on Sep 2, 2005 - 19 answers

I just received a new Acer laptop. The hard drive is 100GB, but it arrived divided into two partitions. According to the Windows XP Professional disk management window, the drive is divided as follows ... [more inside]
posted by punishinglemur on Aug 11, 2005 - 22 answers

I have a 512 MB Lexar jump drive, which I connected to my brother's computer before installing windows. I didn't think about this while instructing him on the install, and the partition on the jump drive was deleted. How can I fix it?
posted by borkencode on May 19, 2005 - 3 answers

What should I do with my new hard drive? [more inside]
posted by jewishbuddha on Apr 21, 2005 - 11 answers

Um, oops.
So I changed my disk partition a bit, changing my big data drive to a 'logical' partition of the same file-type (without changing the start or endpoint of the partition), and now Windows isn't recognizing it... Is there a good way to undo this horrible thing? The data should definitely still be there - no actual formatting occurred, just a changing of the partition table. Is there a way to undo this?
posted by kaibutsu on Feb 13, 2005 - 3 answers

My WinXP system won't boot. Knoppix comes up fine, and complains that it can't read the partition table. I've got The Ultimate Boot CD; does anyone have a methodology for making things right, or at least recovering whatever I can from the hard drive?
posted by Daddio on Jan 14, 2005 - 6 answers

(Lost Data FIlter)
I attempted to partition my Maxtor 60 GB HDD earlier, while I had a 40 gb Maxtor external USB 2 drive plugged in. What I'm afraid happened is that when the computer rebooted, the drive letters change and Partition Magic 8 was going to work on the external drive.
[more inside] [more inside]
posted by Evstar on Nov 17, 2004 - 6 answers

Linux Filter: Had to re-install XP on a dual-boot machine because I borked it. It overwrote the MBR, where Grub was installed. How do I get GRUB back on the computer, and seeing my linux partition?
posted by SpecialK on Oct 12, 2004 - 5 answers

LinuxFilter: I'm going to delve into the world of Linux and dual-booting. What's a good distro for a n00b? Any tips, especially pertaining to partitioning and installation?
posted by keswick on Aug 26, 2004 - 27 answers

I was trying to install Linux (the latest version of that damned Mandrake), and I seem to have screwed my partition table. Neither Mandrake nor Windows XP will boot -- I'm posting this message from a Knoppix livecd. Mandrake just goes to a blank screen and hangs but Windows gives a message about a missing dll. What can I do to fix this? I'm in over my head here.
posted by reklaw on Jun 10, 2004 - 8 answers

I have a Hard drive question, using XP Pro SP1, 3 hard drives, last one is a Western Digital 160GB special edition. MI (partition and file corruption) [more inside]
posted by Keyser Soze on May 28, 2004 - 5 answers

I just did a full WinXP reinstall. In the process, I took an 80 gig drive which was partitioned to 10/30/40 gig partitions and repartitioned it to 10/10/20/15/25 partitions. Unfortunately, that 40 gig partition held my "My Documents" holding a bunch of Word documents spanning the years and a lot of digital photos that are irreplaceable.

I've tried a few file recovery programs with limited success (recovered around 20% of my files) however I think the problem is the repartitions have split a lot of the files across two or more partitions. Is there a way I can recombine these partitions and try the file recovery programs again??
posted by PWA_BadBoy on Apr 21, 2004 - 3 answers

I have 100GB and 160GB hard drives in my XP computer. I tried using Norton Ghost to move the 100GB info to my latter drive, and it worked but with serious partition errors (windows not booting). I then moved a large amount of data to my 160, the 100 not really having changed. Everything in windows functions, but when I use Partition Magic 8 I get the following error: "Disk 1 appears to have partitions created using a different drive geometry (255h 63s original, 240h 63 current) You should back up...." etcetera. More inside. [more inside]
posted by Keyser Soze on Mar 7, 2004 - 2 answers

Windows XP question... My parents computer is set up that most items are stored on a 20 GB harddrive (or possibly a partition- listed as c:) while they have 100 GB available on d:... When I install software, is it perfectly acceptable to run it off the D drive, and is there a way to switch the set up so most items save to the d drive? [more inside]
posted by drezdn on Feb 23, 2004 - 8 answers

I've just bought a new 80gb hard drive (Hitachi deskstar).
It shows up as 80gb in the bios, but only as 13gb in f-disk.
What's wrong, please?
posted by the cuban on Feb 8, 2004 - 5 answers