Does XP has its own built in facilities to partition HD ?

Does XP has its own built in facilities to partition HD ?

"aa" <aa@microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:u$8Fa8mVKHA.4484@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
> Does XP has its own built in facilities to partition HD ?

Yes, via the Disk Manager (diskmgmt.msc). However, the tool is restricted to
creating, deleting or formatting partitions. It cannot repartition a disk
non-destructively like third-party partition managers.

Yes, it has a built-in Disk Management tool, to start it enter
diskmgmt.msc in the Start menu Run box. The Disk Management tool has
certain limits or drawbacks, it cannot resize existing partitions
without first removing them.

John

aa wrote:
> Does XP has its own built in facilities to partition HD ?
>
>

"aa" <aa@microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:u$8Fa8mVKHA.4484@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:05:01 +0300
> Does XP has its own built in facilities to partition HD ?

Yes it does. Under Explorer
My Computer (right click)
Manage
Disk Management

--
Bill
Windows7 Ultimate (build 7100)
Gateway MX6124 - 2G RAM

On Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:05:01 +0300, "aa" <aa@microsoft.com> wrote:

> Does XP has its own built in facilities to partition HD ?


Yes. And others have told you how.

But when you say "to partition HD," you probably mean that you want to
change the existing partition structure non-destructively. If that's
what you want, you can *not* do that without using a third-party
program.

--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP (Windows Desktop Experience) since 2003
Please Reply to the Newsgroup

Thank you, everybody, yet I am puzzled
If Disk Manager cannot repartition a disk non-destructively, then what is
use of it?
It cannot be used before XP is installed, but using it after installing XP
means reducing the only existing partition, i.e. repartition - you mean it
will destoy XP installation ?

aa wrote:

> Does XP has its own built in facilities to partition HD ?

Each NT-based version of Windows has included a utility to partition
hard disks. That probably isn't what you meant to ask. The functions
available in Disk Management utility in Windows is rather limited. If
you wanted to rearrange, resize, change type, or other partition
functions, you'll need a 3rd party utility.

So what was your real question?

One of the partitioning options at installation time is a size or
allocation of the disk. If XP is installed to a partial use of the
total hard drive size - then post install Disk Management can
be used to partition the remainder of the drive.

"aa" <aa@microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:eZOjLlnVKHA.844@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> Thank you, everybody, yet I am puzzled
> If Disk Manager cannot repartition a disk non-destructively, then what is
> use of it?
> It cannot be used before XP is installed, but using it after installing
> XP
> means reducing the only existing partition, i.e. repartition - you mean it
> will destoy XP installation ?
>
>
>
>

aa wrote:
> Thank you, everybody, yet I am puzzled
> If Disk Manager cannot repartition a disk non-destructively, then
> what is use of it?
> It cannot be used before XP is installed, but using it after
> installing XP means reducing the only existing partition, i.e.
> repartition - you mean it will destoy XP installation ?

Maybe partion ANOTHER disk?

aa wrote:
> Thank you, everybody, yet I am puzzled
> If Disk Manager cannot repartition a disk non-destructively, then
> what is use of it?

Depends on the situation.

If you have more than one hard drive in your PC, Disk Management can be
useful in partitioning any drive that doesn't have your OS on it.

If you wound up with a certain amount of unallocated space after you
installed Windows XP, you can use Disk Management to create partitions
from the unallocated space. Then again, once the partitions were
created, they would remain that size (unless you deleted them or used a
third-party program).

But if you have only one hard drive and if that drive has only one
partition and no unallocated space, then Disk Management is useless. Or
if you have two or more partitions on that hard drive and you need to
resize them (for instance, you would like your partition that has XP on
it to be larger), again it is useless. Fortunately, there are
third-party programs that will allow you to do this.

> It cannot be used before XP is installed, but using it after
> installing XP means reducing the only existing partition, i.e.
> repartition - you mean it will destoy XP installation ?

I've never tried this, and I sure hope it wouldn't even let you do it!
But, hypothetically, if it did allow you to delete the partition
(remember that it doesn't even have the capacity to resize) that has XP
on it, then yes, XP would be destroyed!

Here is one scenario where XP's Disk Management would work:

You have one hard drive that has two partitions and a certain amount of
unallocated space. The first partition is 40GB and contains XP and all
the programs. The second is 100GB and contains data only (Word
documents, MP3s, etc.). And there is 360GB of unallocated space on the
hard drive. You could feasibly copy *all* the data from the data
partition to an external hard drive and then delete the data partition
and finally create one large partition from the unallocated space (now
460GB) so that you could copy all the data to this new partition from
the external hard drive.

The above scenario is the equvialent of resizing the data partition, but
in a very roundabout way! It would be faster to use a third-party disk
partitioning program, but it's still possible to use Disk Management.