Rad
I read your great article on partitioning. It was very informative and well written. :)

I wanted to know what would be the best way to deal with my laptop computer that is going to be delivered to me soon from Dell.  :-/

I have Vista Ultimate on it. I believe that partioning will be good. The drive is 320 gb. So everything Dell loads will also be on it ( I did not add any software) . Should I just do the partition thru Vista or do I need to re-format and start from scratch? Will the operating system all ready occupy the out edge of the disk?

I design and thought I would put Vista on 1 drive and my program on another and the files on a third.  :o

Is this a good approach or am I way off base?  :o

Do you or anyone else have an info or an article on this?

I hope you have a moment to help me. Any wisdom would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You   ::)

Thanks for the kind words. I enjoyed writing that. (Not too long.)


TP wrote on Jun 24^th, 2008 at 2:25pm:

The drive is 320 gb.

u suk. [smiley=smiley.gif] (Mine has 60 .. chock-full of data.)

Have you seen?

http://radified.com/Articles/laptop.htm

Obviously you know partitioning is a personal thing.

With 320, I might do something like:

c: (for o/s + apps) 40- or 50 GB
d: 100
e: 100
f: remainder (80-ish)

.. for a little more flexibility.

I've always used Partition Magic, but the Windows tool should work fine.

Yes, the o/s should be out on leading edge, but makes less of difference, since laptop drives usually spin more slowly (than desktop drives) .. to save power.

What to do with the dell partition is your biggest decision. I'd ask Brian and Dan Goodall their opinion.

I got rid of mine, cuz I had Ghost and needed the space. It was 5 gigs, I think. (> 7, I just checked.)

TP, a new Dell laptop with Vista will typically come already partitioned in a manner that is not easy to work with.  See this thread for an explanation of Dell's partition layout.  You'll likely have four partitions already, including an extended partition at the end with a single logical partition in it.

It is possible to split the Vista (C:) partition to give data its own partition.  You need to shrink partition #3 (Vista) to create unallocated space between it and partition #4 (extended), then expand the front end of the extended partition to bring the unallocated space inside the extended partition, and then you can create one or more logical partitions out of that unallocated space.  That's right--it's rather involved.

Forget using Vista's built-in partitioning program.  It's buggy and not up to this kind of complex task.  You need a good partitioner.  Unfortunately, the venerable Partition Magic won't do it, either, so forget using that.  It can only handle legacy style cylinder-aligned partitions, whereas Dell uses 2048-aligned partitions on their Vista machines.  I'd likewise be leery of most other popular partitioners unless you know for certain they've been updated to work with 2048-aligned partitions.  (Note: I wouldn't rely on claims of "Vista compatibility" because Vista technically doesn't require 2048-aligned partitions, so a utility could be compatible with Vista without being compatible with 2048-aligned partitions.)

Two partitioners known to work are BootIt-NG and Acronis Disk Director 10.  (I only use BootIt-NG, but I know Brian has experience with both.)

I wouldn't worry about the physical location of the OS partition.  Even though Dell puts it in partition #3, it's still only about 10 GB from the front of the disk, and on a 320 GB hard disk that still qualifies as being on the "outer tracks".

The difficulty of working around Dell's preinstalled partitions is one reason many people opt to just nuke the whole thing and start over, doing a clean install of Vista with a fresh partition layout.

Be forewarned that some people have reported that removing the MediaDirect partition and then pressing the MediaDirect button on the laptop causes recurring boot problems.  I don't use MD so haven't investigated why that might occur, but before nuking the MD partition I'd recommend doing your homework to check how people have resolved that problem.  (It might only be if you leave the existing Vista OS partition intact... but again, i don't use MD so haven't paid attention to the details.)

Dan; I started to install BootIt-NG and I got scared when it stated asking me to make choices on the install that I did not understand and I was worried that I would screw something up. I was going to compress drive C, recover the area to D and then use it for files.
I would do this before  putting any other programs on the machine. Can you descibe a simple way or steps to do this?

Thanks, TP

TP,

You don't have to install BING. When it asks whether you want to install, press Cancel or whatever. You then run BING from the boot disc.

Cool Brian, Thanks. I am going away for the weekend and my mind is fried , but I'll try that Tuesday

Well I am anxious and at it again Brian. My C drive (Vista Ultimate) Has 292357 MB allocated to it. Do you have a suggestion to how much I can take and put in MBR entry 3 partition?

TP,

I looked at my CD. When you boot to the BING CD (or floppy) you click Cancel to avoid an install and then OK to enter Maintenance mode. Each time you boot to the CD you have to adjust the Settings. These stick if BING is installed. You should have a tick in..

Use Volume Label
Align 2048
Make HD0 Active
Use HD0 in BPB
Limit Primaries (4)
PATA CD Support

Everything else should NOT be ticked.

Then click Partition Work and let us know what is there.

From Vista, what is the used space of your C: drive?

Do you have a floppy drive? You can take screen shots of Partition Work with a floppy. Press F12 to capture the screen. A screen shot would really help us.

It's a .pcx file. You might have to send it to me.

TP,

This is a screen capture of Partition Work from my test computer.



http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b16/bjkdegree/IMG1.gif

I will try to send that on Tuesday Brian. I am not in town yet. 8-)

Brian; Back at it. I had allready done some work on it so here is the results. I still think I may have to much on the OS but I really don't know what to do with all this space.

DELL UTILITY- O  PARTITION     86 MB  DELL UTILITY
RECOVERY-1       PARTITION      99994 MB HPFS/NTFS
OS-2                  PARTITION     10240 MB  HPFS/NTFS
MBR ENTRY         PARTITION     194923 MB EXTENDED
     FILES A         VOLUME         49999 MB  HPFS/NTFS
  PROG B            VOLUME        49999 MB   HPFS/NTFS
-----------            VOLUME         923363 MB  FREE SPACE
UNNAMED           VOLUME          2559 TYPE DDh/221
----------              PARTITION          1 MB  FREE SPACE

Don't know where that last 1 mb came from.   :o

TP,

Good work. If you don't like the partition sizes you can always do it again. I don't know how large a Vista partition needs to be. I gather it contains about 7 GB of used space after the initial install. My guess is a total size of 30 GB would be plenty but that's a guess. It depends on the size of your installed apps.

That last 1 MB is 2048 sectors of unallocated space. No problem.

PS.   I assume 923363 MB  FREE SPACE is a typo. Maybe it's really 92 GB.

Thanks Brian for all your help. I really appreciate it. I did do a typo on that one. I think I will put less in the OS only with the thought that it will take less time to defrag later on.

Thanks again   :D