Hard Drive Partition help

[USSEnterprise]

For some reason, the last time I restored my PC to the original software, I left out 10GB of space out of the partition on purpose. Is there any way of making that space into its own partition without having to reformatthe whole drive?

[Tailgunner]

Yes, you can set it up as another logical drive. Assuming an XP system, try this.

[USSEnterprise]

It worked! Thanks! I now have a 7GB more free space

[Goz]

Perfect answer by tailgunner for the XP folk. If not using XP tools like partition magic would work well.

-Goz

[shmokes]

With Partition Magic you could even add that extra 10 GB to the exisiting partition.  Really cool program.

[mr.Curmudgeon]

Since we're on the topic of partitions, I've just set up a new video editing system with an 80GB main HD (7200/IDE) for OS/Programs and (2) additional 250GB drives (SATA) for raw video footage.

I've been researching various partitioning schemes and I've gotten conflicting info. I'd like to know if there is an ideal/recommended way to organize the main OS HD in such a way that accounts for swap file fragmentation, and program loading/access speed.

I've heard that a seperate partition for the swap file will keep things less "fraggy" (thus keeping load times short), but then I've also heard that having the swap file on a different partition slows down loads times since it's accessing a different partition each time?

Any ideas? or links I might follow-up with?

TIA,
mrC

[Havok]

Since we're on the topic of partitions, I've just set up a new video editing system with an 80GB main HD (7200/IDE) for OS/Programs and (2) additional 250GB drives (SATA) for raw video footage.

I've been researching various partitioning schemes and I've gotten conflicting info. I'd like to know if there is an ideal/recommended way to organize the main OS HD in such a way that accounts for swap file fragmentation, and program loading/access speed.

I've heard that a seperate partition for the swap file will keep things less "fraggy" (thus keeping load times short), but then I've also heard that having the swap file on a different partition slows down loads times since it's accessing a different partition each time?

Any ideas? or links I might follow-up with?

TIA,
mrC

The optimal configuration is to have one physical hard drive for the OS, one for the partition, and then data "scratch drives" The OS and partition can be any small size. The key here is separate physical drives, and optimally separate controllers. You can easily do this with the newer mobos that have "RAID" controllers - you will be able to put 4 drives in 4 different controllers for the best performance.