new partition or not?

[gyates]

I have my HD partitioned in half. One for apps. and the other for data. I have recently decided that I would like to have a smaller partition for Windows only and the remainder of the first partition for my apps. Can I do this additional partition with fdisk, and without damaging my data on the second half of HD?

 

[Alex Ethridge]

You can use FDisk to delete one or all logical drives in the extended partition. Doing so will cause you to lose only the data in the logical DOS drive(s) you deleted. You can also delete the extended partition and retain only the data in the Primary DOS partition. You can then recreate the Extended DOS partition and as many logical drives as you like in that extended partition.

But, that is about as far as you can go without also losing the data in the primary partition. You cannot rezize partitions on the fly (without losing data) using FDisk.

Partition Magic will allow you to resize partitions on the fly without losing data. It doesn't suffer from the limitations of FDisk.

 

[gyates]

Thank you for your responce.

So do you mean that I can delete the Primary partition (C and then create two new (Crimary-, D:-extended-) in that same space without touching the existing extended partition which contains the data(D:, to become E.

I know that Partition Majic would end this whole headache, but cannot afford that now.

 

[JohnWill]

Actually, I believe you can only have one extended partition on a drive. You can have up to four primary partitions, or three primary and one extended. Of course, you can have lots of logical drives in the extended partition.

The way I always attack these kinds of problems is with Partition Magic.

 

[Alex Ethridge]

FDisk can create only one Primary partition on a drive. If you delete that Primary, you lose all the data in the only Primary partition. FDisk is for setting up new systems or deleting and recreating partitions where data loss is not a concern.

The short story is that if you want to manipulate partitions without losing data, you need a program like Partition Magic.