Conclusion On Partitioning Drive - Partitioning a hard drive is a process of dividing a secondary storage space into variable data segments known as Partitions.For partition management, partition editor program can be used.

I have a HP desktop, having Windows XP installed in it.It consists of 120 GB of hard drive, having partition of 40 GB each.My C:drive is totally loaded with the softwares, while some of my drives are almost empty.Is there any way by which I can extend C:drive partition by taking some space from other drives ? What do you suggest me ?

Hard disk partitioning

• This is a process of formation of new and empty hard disk in which an operating system can be installed in it.
• This process includes partitioning and formatting a drive which leads to a bootable hard drive.
• In this, a hard disk is divided into a large partition which are then divided into multiple small partitions.
• It involves using FDISK program based on Windows, along with FAT32 support.

Format hard drives

After partitioning your hard drive into multiple segments or partitions, you can choose to format your system.Formatting involves following steps –

• Formatting involves installing an operating system into the system.
• First step, is to select the partition in which you want install Windows.
• After that, select the format option from the multiple format options available.This step involves selecting a file system like NTFS and FAT32 file system.
• Press enter.
• After the Windows setup program has formatted the partition, follow the steps that appear on the screen to install Windows XP.
• Restart the system, so that the changes can take an effect.
• Disk management tools can be used if you want to create and format more partitions.

Partition hard drive in XP

Before you do the partitioning of your hard drive, make sure you do the following things –

• If you are using SATA Hard disk then select the appropriate file system while if you are using IDE Hard disk then set the jumpers as per the role your hard disk is playing (master & sub-ordinate).
• For setting jumpers and cabling, make proper changes in BIOS.
• Make the back up of your data if your hard disk contains any of it.
• Make sure the disk management tools and drive overlay software which your system has, are compatible with the Windows XP.Don’t use drive overlays with the windows XP because they are not compatible with them.
• Keep the back up of device drivers if you have updated them from the internet.
• Now boot the computer from the CD drive.Configure your system using windows XP CD.For this boot device priority must be set to CD drive.
• Follow the instructions showing on the screen.
• System will show the available physical hard disk space.It will show the existing partitioned and non-partitioned disk space.
• If you want to create new partitions you can do soby choosing non-partitioned disk space.
• Now, choose the number of partitions you want to make.
• Last step is to format the ayatem and install windows XP as shown above.

Extend partition Windows XP

• If your computer hard drive is divided into more than 4 partitions then extended partitions are created.In this case, each extended partition consists of a partition table that describes how the partition is further sub-divided.
• It is a good practice to separately store data related files from operating system files and application programs.Hence, for this purpose extended partitions are created.
• Data files partition is called logical drive since these drives can only exist in an extended partition.This can be also called logical partition.
• Extended partitions are containers of logical drive that are first formatted and assigned drive letters..
• In a computer,extended partitions are shown by dark green color while logical drives are shown by dark blue color.