Notebook/PC partitioning guide

This guide attempts to help users on how to partition their hard-drives,however there are some Model specific guides, for example the HP-Compaq forum has a guide for that, please check your laptop's forum for specific instructions.

Note : I give no warranty with this guide not about the hardware nor the data and software, proceed at your own risk.

The hard drive is split into several partitions.
There are two main kinds of partitions :

If the format of the partition (e.g. NTFS,FAT32,ext3) is recognizable in Windows,the Primary Partitions and the logical drives will show-up in My Computer.
Note : If you have purchased an copy of Windows with your Notebook/PC,you would have a hidden partition for the recovery purposes.The recovery partition would usually be either on the beginning(like ASUS notebooks) or at the very end (like some of HP laptops).If you have not been given a recovery cd,make sure to take the best care you can of this partition.

The data about the position and size of the partitions,Also the indicator of the partition type is recorded in a small block at the beginning of the drive.This data is called the partition table.
At many times,only the partition table gets damaged,so if you back-up the partition-table before doing risky operations.

The Recovery partition is usually a FAT32 drive.With some kind of Windows installed on it.The boot partition (the drive from which the bios tries to boot) is the recovery partition,it waits for the special key (e.g. F9 on my ASUS),if the key is pressed the recovery partition brings up the recovery menu,if not after a few seconds it proceeds to booting from the first partition.

Recovery CD's not working :
Sometimes the MBR(Master boot record) gets changed for some reason(usually when newbies try to install linux).At this point trying to use the Windows recovery CD's will be useless.It'll give some errors or crash half-way installing linux.
At this point, you should change the MBR.You can do it in these ways :
(note these two ways only help you to re-install windows or use recovery CD's if you want to revive your dead linux, search for "Reinstalling Grub" rescue guides)
a) If you have a Windows XP Installation disk which is able to bring the recovery console :
Type in : fixmbr.
b) If you don't have such CD's.Find a DOS-based boot CD like this one : www.ultimatebootcd.com
Then boot from the CD.Type : "fdisk /mbr"
(Note some of the boot CD's might not have fdisk,you'll have to download it : like this one and burn it to the same CD)

Which partition format to use :
There are two main kinds of partition that Windows can make use of : FAT32,NTFS (FAT16/12 is outdated, and because it's size limit you are always forced to make FAT32 - and also some features like long file names).

But there are some problems, not many utilities can work with NTFS, linux cannot work with NTFS (I think it'll only be read-only and to be able to write to it you need to patch the kernel - a real pain).


Doing Partition from scratch :
If you are doing partition from a completely blank hard-drive,I personally suggest Ranish Partition manager it's complete,free and runs under DOS.
Another option is to do the partition using Linux,but remember,the vfat partition done by the Linux installer are not completely recognized by Windows so you might be forced to reformat them.
You can also install Windows XP/2K on the empty drive and let it do the partitioning.If it,by some reason,formatted the whole drive into a single-large partition,you can resize it by the steps below.
Some people might like to have their drives to exactly have 1,500,000 Kilobytes or something,this is usually impossible (except some special numbers),because this size depends on the number cylinders on the disk (the size of the cylinders is unchangeable)

How to Resize,Merge Partition :
If you delete/make files too much (don't worry,Windows does it all the time) the data gets fragmented,if you want to know how your hard-drive looks like do this : bring up the run window (windows key+R) or from the start menu,and type in : "dfrg.msc",select one of your drives and press the analyze button.
If you try to resize a partition using newer software like partition magic,you see that even if 10% of your drive is used (90% free disk space) you only can diminish the size to (for example 30%),if you do defragmentation,you will be able to do it.
Merging partitions,this sometimes proves to be a risky one,sometimes some partition software/OS makes little changes to the drives/partitions,so trying to merge the two drives simply fails and makes the second drive unusable.Once when I was trying to merge two partitions,Partition Magic mumbled something about wrong size or something,failing in the middle of the operation and thus destroying the second drive.
So,you might want to back-up your second drive somewhere if the data is important.

How to avoid partition-disaster :
1 - Do not use every partition software you can reach,some utils like the ancient MS-DOS partitioning ones,like the old FDISK might not recognize your "large" hard-drive.
2 - If no CD has been supplied with the notebook,burn to recovery partition to a CDs/DVDs at once.This can be done with Norton Ghost or similar software.At some notebooks like a friend's HP Pavilion,at some place the laptop itself suggests this thing to do(refer to your user manuals to find out how to do it).
3 - Use good software to do the partitioning,Paragon Partition manager is good,runs under Windows and user friendly.

What to do after a Partition-disaster :
Edit : 0 - Partition Recovery software is also available,it tried to find the volumes themselves without consulting the partition table.there are also free edition available,sadly,when I once came to use one of them,it was too late.(Partition Magic had made sure of that).There is also an extremely useful utility called "PC Inspector".Apart form detecting deleted partitions, it can also search for file signatures and magic id's and recovery them.
1 - Healing the damage : Before you go wiping all the data you have,the good thing will be to try to revive the data.On many cases the only damaged data is the partition table.
For example many users including me,had their partition table messed up after Trying to Install Fedora Core 2,the problem arises from doing the first partitioning using that ancient MS-DOS FDISK.For this particular problem a very easy solution can be found by google...
(Instead of fixing the partition table in 3-minutes, I proceeded with step 3)
2 - Trying to contact some of the support/crisis centers,they know how to do stuff...
3 - Sometimes the partition table has been completely messed up.In these cases even linux's FDISK,Ranish partition manager and any software I tried,get's confused and failes to edit the hard-drives.If the data is not crucial,you might want to try "Killdisk",the most brutal way to clean a drive.This thing starts setting every single bit of the data on the hard-disk to zero.I tried it once,let it wipe 6~8% of the hard-disk,skipped the rest,then started partitioning...

Converting Partitions
Conversion can be done by many utilis and by Windows itself.
Important notice : You cannot convert NTFS to FAT32 so easily.For example Kaspersky antivirus has some protective utility that adds some data for later lookup not as files but as some internal data.This feature only works with NTFS.So if you convert the drives.It'll be annoying.You first have to make Kaspersky delete these data before proceeding to conversion.

MBR, bootsector, what are they ?

-source:wikipedia.

WARNING : From the recent posts here and on the internet, it seems that Partition Magic cannot edit the partitions of Vista laptops correctly, leading to loss of data.


Some partitioning software :
-PC Inspector : An extremely useful and free partition/file recovery program.It can recover both partitions and find the files that were in deleted partitions (obviously the space that belongs to the partition shouldn't have undergone a full format) [Thanks to Sesshomaru for point this out )
-Paragon Partition : A partition manager I tried (suggested by a friend), this one is extremely good.I have much better experience with it that Partition Magic.
-Newer Versions of FDISK.
-PowerQuest (now Norton) Partition Magic : On of the most famous partition software,though I have some bad experience from it.Also under Windows.
-Ranish Partition Manager : A very good software,under dos,but very intelligent.
-Linux's FDISK : A good software - 100% user enemy but powerful - but as I pointed out,the vfat drives are not recognized too good under Windows.
-Disk Druid : The partition software running on Linux setup on many distributions (e.g. Fedora Core 5)
-QTParted and GParted : The partitioning utilities coming with KDE and GNOME.
-KILLDISK : The most brutal way to clean a drive.This thing starts setting every single bit of the data on the hard-disk to zero.

 

QTParted is also a good linux partition manager. It's even got a nice graphical front end.
And GParted as well.
The new versions of FDisk are pretty nice.

I wish I could think of some of the disk recovery programs I've used. I accidently reformatted the wrong disk (stupid me, I formatted my 160 gig drive instead of my 120 gig drive). I found a few programs that are able to recover data under windows, and one was free. It takes a LONG time but is able to recover directory structures and some file names even.

And that was after a quick format

Not a bad little guide.

 

Extended partitions are not really useful in themselves. But with our current obsolete BIOS, a harddrive can only hold 4 partitions. To get around this, extended partitions contain a second logical harddrive (which means they can contain another 4 logical partitions)

So what you're talking about above is really logical, not extended partitions. And as far as I know, no OS can boot from them. It's simply not possible because the BIOS can't read them (it only understands the four "real" partitions).
What Linux usually does is have a small boot (primary) partition, and then put everything else in logical partitions inside an extended one.
Am I wrong here? Is it possible to boot directly from a logical one?

 

I think you can put a Boot record at their beginning, so the MBR tells the bios to boot from there.

-Source : Wikipedia.
This will do the trick.

 

I think it'd be a good idea to mention software like PC Inspector. It's free, and effective in case of messed up partitions.

 

Good one, i didn't know of this one.It's extremely useful.
Thanks.

 

1. There are no limits on the number of logical partitions in the extended partition.

2. Recent operating systems can run from an extended partition; Linux could for god knows how long, and I know Win98 and beyond can (clearly I'm using the word "recent" very liberally here).

--- Getting Technical on #1---

The way the partition table works, is you have your primary MBR with the 4 primary partition records (the extended partition counts as a primary). In the MBR, the partition table then holds a pointer to a new partition table on the first logical partition in the extended partition. The first logical partition in the extended partition then holds a pointer to the second logical partition, and the second to the third, etc.; effectively creating a singly linked list for the dev/programmers/CSers here.

On Windows, however, there is an effective limit on the number of logical partitions (including the primaries): the number of letters with the alphabet. At that point, I'm not sure what the OS would do to make them addressable. If anyone wants to make 27 partitions on their computer, then please let me know how it turns out... (I would speculate that the Disk Manager would be fine making more, but just you wouldn't be able to reference them from anywhere else in the OS itself for lack of letters.)

But seriously: who needs 27 partitions...?

 

I'm going to purchase A D630 with XP Pro 120G 7200rpm. Dell offers custom partitioning for $10.

Should I install a partition for future upgrade to Vista?

For what other reasons might I get a partition?

Any drawbacks to partions? Speed?

Thanks.

 

Well, the main drawback of numerous partitions is the confusion they can cause.And the difficulty of their management.And as I said the merging of the partitions can be a risky business.

 

The notebook I plan on getting over the summer (ThinkPad, ideally...) will have a recovery partition, so to dual boot Linux i'll end up having to create an extended partition.

Is this worth the effort, or should I just create the recovery disk and wipe out the recovery partition? This way I can stick to 4 primary partitions.

Also, how does GParted compare to Paragon Partition in terms of reliability? I'd like a trouble-free resize of the preinstalled Vista partition so as to create a shared documents and /home partition (ext3), so would like to know what's the more reccommended utility (or if there's no difference).

If it saves a hassle, I wouldn't mind paying for Paragon. Lastly -- if it runs in Windows and I resize the Windows partition, is there some kind of issue that that creates? It seems like that shouldn't be possible to restructure that part of the disk while the O.S. is running, but as is apparent i'm new to all this.

 

Paragon partition is far more reliable.As for the recovery it's best to keep it because it's far more faster to recover from your hard-drive.But using linux will probably disable the recovery (it can be activated AFAIK, contact the IBM folks at the forum for more info) (there is a way to boot linux from the Windows selection screen - or at least there was in Windows XP)