Partition Question

scastle · 05-03-2006, 11:59 PM

Web development, I'm fine but when it comes to operating systems, forget it.

I'm a current user of Windows XP Professional. I was talking to my neighbor, and they were telling me how they had a "dual-partition"; one using windows and the other using a flavor of linux.

I want to be able to partition my hard drive so I can decide which partition I want to boot. But I don't want to worry about completely reformatting my system. I've run a few live CD's and I've chosen ubuntu.

Is there any way I can create a partition without reformatting my whole system, and if so, how do I go about it?

I was looking at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309000#E0EB0ACAAA and wondered if that is a way to go about it. What risks are involved?

-Steve

**Lyte** · 05-04-2006, 12:15 AM

Hey Steve,

Welcome to PC101.

Check out the threads below as there you'll find some good information and links to FREE partition software. You should not have to reformat your HD in order to create partitions.

Partition Your Hard Drive

Remove partitions

Feel free to follow up with any additional questions you may have.

Lyte

firestorm · 05-04-2006, 05:44 PM

Just remember that nothing is 100% efficient and you do risk the chance of losing some info. If you want to go the safest route, use partition magic. There are free versions out there to that work pretty good.

As for deciding on which OS to boot doing power on, Ubuntu will have a boot loader that will either ask or pick one automatically after say 3 secs.

StarGirl16 · 05-28-2006, 05:45 PM

You mean "dual boot' with linux

And yes, I dont recommend partitioning without formatting.. you can use the Windows disk management tools to do this, but it's alot more risky than doing it with a complete format.