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The advantage of a disk partitioning is more apparent since it provides users with more flexibility in space management and file organization. This time, I’ll show you step-by-step how to create a new partition on your hard disk which has a single partition preinstalled with programs, Windows and other data files. To do this, you need to shrink your existing partition to make way for a new partition, without having hassle to either reformat the hard disk or move off the files from the existing partition. This can be easily done with a freeware such as Parted Magic, a bootable Linux CD which comes with GParted (Gnome Partition Editor), which is an open source disk partitioning utility. Though this software is a free utility, it is amazingly packed with the utmost functionally which is just like other commercial disk partitioning utilities.

Step 1: Partitioning Purposes

Most of the desktops or laptops are available in preinstalled partitions as in Windows, Linux, and other operating systems. However, the partition is almost always fixed as one huge Drive C, or two partitions of Drive C and D which will take up most of the hard disk spaces.

Before beginning to partition your PC into several portions that you desire, make sure that you know how many partitions you need, how much space to allocate for each of them and what you want to use for the partitions.

You may want to separate the operating system files from other files such as MP3 folders, data files, Internet Downloads, image folders, audio files, or game folders. Or you may want to have multiple copies of the same operating system, or you just want to create a multi-boot system with different operating systems.

For your information, you can create up to four primary partitions in each hard disk. If you use an extended partition combined with logical partitions, you can create as many as 16 partitions. Nevertheless, in most cases, two or three partitions are just more than enough for most computer Geeks.

Step 2: Preparing for the Partition

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Prior to partitioning, let’s do a bit “stock clearing” to make things easier. Firstly, you should use the Scandisk tool to scan the partition (say Drive C or Drive D or both drives) in your PC for errors. To do this, click Start, Run and then press the Enter button. In the Open box, type sfc/scannow and click OK.

Secondly, you should ensure that there is enough free space in your PC. To achieve this goal, you can start by eliminating or archiving all unnecessary or unwanted files by uninstalling them.

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Next, run the Disk Cleanup tool to free up more spaces. To do this, click Start, Run and press the Enter button. Now, type cleanmgr in the Open box and click OK. To clear up all junk files, you should delete items in Download Program Files, Recycle Bin, and any other items which are labeled as “temporary.”

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After the third step, now proceed to run Disk Defragmenter so that you can consolidate the partition’s free space. Click Start, Run and press Enter. In the Open box, type dfrg.msc and click OK.

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Take note that if you’re in Windows, you should alert with the size and volume label of the partition that you will plan to shrink. Click Start and My Computer to obtain this info.

Step 3: Backup your Existing Partition

At this step, you should know that the idea of using partition software such as Parted Magic is to avoid you from the hassle of deleting your existing partitions or formatting the hard disk. However, you should take notice that either shrinking partitions or partitioning a disk will involve a degree of a risk. Therefore, you are recommended to backup your important data or files prior to the partition. To know more about how to do step-by-step backup procedures for both Window XP and Vista, you can surf to this website here.

Step 4: Downloading and Creating Disc

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For you partition purpose, download Parted Magic software, which is the live CD ISO File, which is a bootable Linux-based image. You can download this software here. Look for its filename which is pmagic-2.2 iso and its file size is roughly 45MB. After you have downloaded the file, remember to locate this file in a separate folder, say, “c:\pmagic”.

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After downloading the iso file for Parted Magic, you must convert your newly acquired iso file to a bootable CD. You can create the bootable CD either using your existing CD burning software, or a freeware such as ImgBurn. Next, click Write image file to disk as shown above. Once this is completed, the CD should be removed to the bootable optical drive on your PC. You can download ImgBurn here.

Step 5: Disconnecting your Unnecessary Drives

Before carrying out this step, make sure you shut down your computer and disconnect all unnecessary devices and storage drives. These may include USB flash drives, external hard disks, card readers and extra hard disks. This step is essential to be taken in order to accelerate Parted Magic’s boot time and its device detection process. Removing unnecessary drives are vital to prevent you from accidentally changing partitions on the wrong hard disks or drives.

Step 6: Booting Parted Magic CD

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Now, you should insert the Parted Magic bootable CD that you created in step 4 into your optical drive, and configure your system to boot from this drive. Just before the Windows starts, remember to hit the key sequence or the special key to access BIOS settings (you’ll always be prompted on screen). Under Boot option, you should select optical drive or CD drive, and then exit BIOS.

Next, you’ll see the Parted Magic Boot Options Menu at the beginning of the boot procedure. You should now select the Default setting (Runs from RAM/ Ejects CD) unless you’ve a system with less than 256MB of RAM. After you made your selection, the OS will copy itself into your system memory and boot into the front end interface. After some point, the CD tray will eject (that means you can put it away because it is no longer needed for the rest of the process) and is now fully operating from RAM.

Step 7: Launching GParted (Parted Magic)

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After completing the boot process, you should see the Parted Magic as shown above. Next, you should launch GParted by clicking on its icon, the one which looks like a hard disk (the first icon from its list of detected device). Then, you’ve to wait for a while as there’ll be a little delay. This is because GParted scans for available devices before it is ready to use.

Step 8: Selecting your Task

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From the main window of GParted, select the targeted drive. Automatically, GParted will select the first storage device it detects. From the toolbar, use the drop-down list to choose the correct drive, if the drive is other than the default selection. After selecting the drive, a graphical view of its partition scheme will be displayed in the main window. Now, you can choose the partition that you want to shrink. This is the largest NTFS partition which is usually called /dev/hda1. Make sure its label and size matches the partition info from step 2.

Step 9: Resizing the Partition

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From GParted’s toolbar, click the Resize/Move button, and the “Resize/Move/dev/” dialog box will open. The color-coded indicator guides you to shrink the partition. The yellow block marks the amount of data used on the partition. You’re advisable to leave enough space to the right of this mark while choosing to resize the partition. In this example, we’ll resize the NTFS partition from 38.1GMB to 20.5GB.

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Click the Resize/Move button at the bottom right, and you’ll return to GParted main window. Notice that the graphical view of the disk has changed, and previously-grayed-out options on the toolbar are now enabled.

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The status bar in the window’s lower-left corner will also report a “Operation Pending” message. To complete the operation, that is to resize the NTFS partition, choose the Apply button in GParted’s toolbar. Before any actual operations take place, a window will pop up asking you to back up your data. You can click Cancel, or click Apply to continue.

Step 10: Creating New Partition

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The unallocated drive space is now available for partitioning after shrinking the main partition. Click on the unallocated remaining on the drive, and click on the New button to bring up the “Create New Partition” dialog box.

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In the new dialog box, choose Primary partition instead of extended partition in the Create as: section. You can also key in a volume label in the Label: section. The new partition will take up all remaining space on the hard disk by default, so you should resize it if you plan to add another partition. Click Add to complete this step and to return to GParted’s main window.

Step 11: Exit Parted Magic

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Your new window is now updated with the new partition. At this point, you can exit Parted Magic and reboot into windows by clicking on the exit button at the bottom right corner.

Step 12: Rebooting into Windows

When you’re in the boot process, Windows will warn about disk problems and run Chkdsk. Do not be panicked; instead, you just allow it to complete the tests and verify the partition. When completing the loading, Windows will detect the new partition and report “new hardware found.” Next, it will prompt you to reboot the system. After the reboot process, the new partition will appear in the list of storage devices in My Computer, in which it’ll be assigned a new drive letter, typically E: or D:. Now, you’ve successfully partitioned your hard disk. And you can now use it just like any other hard disk.