It can be convenient to create one or more partitions on your hard drive. A partition is a part of your hard drive that you dedicate to a separate drive. You can use these separate drives to backup your files or you can install another operating system f. ex Windows XP on the same computer.
Creating a partition under Vista is actually quite easy and only requires that you have free space on your hard drive. You must also be logged in with administrator rights – which most private users are.
This guide has been kindly borrowed from VistaGuide.dk.
How to create a partition
1.) Click Start-> Right-click Computer – & gt; select Manage. You now have access to Computer Management.
2.) Select Storage> Disk Management. You will now get an overview of your physical drives, as well as partitions. At the bottom of the window, you can see how your hard drive’s storage space is distributed. Areas colored with blue are already dedicated to f. create a partition. The black areas are space that has not yet been allocated.
3.) Please read this step if you do not have black areas i.e. unallocated space. You can do this by reducing your hard drive. Select your primary hard drive and right-click on it – & gt; select Shrink Volume.
4.) You must now right-click on one of the black areas that have not yet been allocated. Select “New simple volume”.
5.) You will now be presented with a guide to help you through. Click Next.
6.) Now you need to specify the size of the partition you are creating. You can specify a size in megabytes or simply select the maximum. Click Next.
7.) Here you need to select a drive letter. It is easiest to choose the letter that is the default. Click Next.
8.) You now get 2 options whether you want to format the partition now or later. Note, you can only apply your NYE partition after you have formatted it. If Vista asks you if you want to format your nye partition, f. E. G. Drive F, then only your partition and not your entire hard drive will be formatted.
9.) Click Finish. You now have a nye partition which you can see under Start> Computer. It acts in all aspects as a secondary hard drive.
