Find solution
Can you partition a drive without erasing data?

Is it Possible to Partition my external drive without disturbing the data that's already in it?

  • My Computer has just 40 GB HDD with 30-10 GB Partition. I recently bought a 1 TB Buffalo External Drive and without thinking formatted it to NTFS. Then I copied a lot of stuffs in it (about 70 GB), I would like to know is it possible to now partition it without doing anything to the files that are already there? (I feel 1TB whole is too big and would like to partition it into say for eg., 6 partitions for backups, music, software, games etc). Also is there a limit to the number of partitions that I can make? seeing mathematically I could easily make 9 or so partitions of approx. 100 GB. What's the largest size partition you would recommend? and finally can I install another OS (like linux) on one of these partitions (supposing my computer supports booting from the external drive) My Computer is 2.4 Ghz Pentium with 768 MB RAM and has WinXP Pro SP3.

  • Answer:

    Yeah, you can do this fine. In Windows Vista and 7 you need to go into Control Panel - > Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management. Find the drive you want to partition, right click on it, choose shrink drive (might take awhile to load) and enter the amount of space you want the new partition to have and click okay. If the drive fails, then you will lose all the data on every partition (they're all on the one drive and it's not in RAID format) so there is no point having so many partitions. I would suggest have one for Linux and one for everything else. You can boot from an external USB drive but the latency might be quite high so I wouldn't suggest it.

Raja at Yahoo! Answers Visit the source

Was this solution helpful to you?

Other answers

right click computer and select manage find your external in the window that appears right click this drive and select "shrink" if you leave setting as is this will approximatly half the drive 2 x 500gb click the half that is blue and select "shrink" again, this again will half the drive THE first part off this drive should still contain your stuff right click the partions and format then click the other 500gb partition and again shrink you will have 4 x 250 gb drives

Making partitions requires that the drive be reformatted, which erases the drive. You may need to burn a whole bunch of CDs (700 mb each) or DVDs (4.5 gb or if you can afford and are double layer DVD burning capable, 8.5 gb) to back the files up. A recommended size for the partitions is whatever you feel you need. I have 2-100, 1-150 and 1-230 gig partitions for various uses. (The largest for video/audio, the middle for applications and the smallest for OS use, as I have 2 different OS's that I can toggle between.) I also have a 1 tb drive that I left with a single partition. I use it as a "Dump everything here and then decide where to move it for storage" temporary file/work drive. That way I don't have to worry about if it will fit and can compress the files if needed before putting them on their specified partition. As far as booting from the external drive? It depends on the drive's ROM rather than the computer. Check the hard drive manufacturer's site to see if it is "bootable".

Related Q & A:

Just Added Q & A:

Find solution

For every problem there is a solution! Proved by Solucija.

  • Got an issue and looking for advice?

  • Ask Solucija to search every corner of the Web for help.

  • Get workable solutions and helpful tips in a moment.

Just ask Solucija about an issue you face and immediately get a list of ready solutions, answers and tips from other Internet users. We always provide the most suitable and complete answer to your question at the top, along with a few good alternatives below.