Computer question

burdette

I finally got tired of our old Gateway (circa 1998) crashing (after a bloody masacre last night) so I bought a new hp Pavilion a520n tonight on the way home from work. I'm typing from it now! woo hoo. Great deal... 'lists' for $730... hp had a $50 rebate, Micro Center had an $80 rebate.. and Micro Center had another $100 rebate if you applied for their credit card and used it... so.. $730 plus tax minus $230... DVD burner included! along with a 9-in-1 media card reader.... plus, it's shiny! I opened the box, took a big sniff, and told my wife, "smells like prosperity."

Question... this thing came with a 160 Gb hard drive. It is partioned into the main C drive and a "recovery" D drive. How do I.. can I... partition the C drive into at least one other drive for data, leaving Window XP and applications on C and putting our personal stuff on E?? Maybe I'm paranoid after almost losing all of our digital photos and stuff on the Gateway (even now it is dead and I'm only hoping I can pull the data HD and recover some stuff).... but I'd like to partition if I can. I got as far as "format C:" but that would wipe the drive. Can I partition it without having to wipe it clean?

PolkWannabie

If you have a single physical drive and your worried about it going south, it won't make much difference how many partitions it has.

Think backup.

HBombToo

Mark I was thinking you could go and buy an external HD for that purpose.

No sign of Tino yet bro...

HBomb

disneyjoe7

Caution on redoing drive Don't remove the D recovery partion, Gateway/HP only really gives you the key for the recovery the meat of this is on the recovery partion not the recovery CD.
I found out the HARD WAY so trust me on this one.

So with this in mind if you really need a back up drive that's what you want a backup drive. Consider a second add on drive I do this myself with a 4 gig drive. I keep backup of any thing important on this drive. When I feel the need to redo I use windows to move pictures and whatever I need over first.

I would say this also, the recovery disk may redo drive back to factory fresh so any other portion maybe wiped clean. So when all hell breaks out just unplug 2nd drive let the recovery do what ever (you will relax better knowing your stuff is SAFE)
On the other hand XP is good I don't feel the need to redo computer much, so you may never feel the need to breakout the recovery CD. :eek:

Originally posted by burdette
I finally got tired of our old Gateway (circa 1998) crashing (after a bloody masacre last night) so I bought a new hp Pavilion a520n tonight on the way home from work. I'm typing from it now! woo hoo. Great deal... 'lists' for $730... hp had a $50 rebate, Micro Center had an $80 rebate.. and Micro Center had another $100 rebate if you applied for their credit card and used it... so.. $730 plus tax minus $230... DVD burner included! along with a 9-in-1 media card reader.... plus, it's shiny! I opened the box, took a big sniff, and told my wife, "smells like prosperity."

Question... this thing came with a 160 Gb hard drive. It is partioned into the main C drive and a "recovery" D drive. How do I.. can I... partition the C drive into at least one other drive for data, leaving Window XP and applications on C and putting our personal stuff on E?? Maybe I'm paranoid after almost losing all of our digital photos and stuff on the Gateway (even now it is dead and I'm only hoping I can pull the data HD and recover some stuff).... but I'd like to partition if I can. I got as far as "format C:" but that would wipe the drive. Can I partition it without having to wipe it clean?

faster100

Well it will make a difference if say the C; drive gets corrupted and wont boot, easy fix.. format and reinstall XP.. if you have a D and maybe even E: drive.. those files are safe and sound... I do this as a minimum on all computers i build.. C: d, and E drive... at the least have 2 partitions, C and

you can do this with a program called partition magic... It will safely let you move partitions, data and create partitions... without messing up your main drive.. your computer will run faster when it doesnt have to try and access 160 gigs for one file.. smaller partitions will make seek time faster IMO... lemme know if you need any other help

faster100

also, a side note... HP will send a full setup disk per request and all they ask is you pay shipping and for the cd..

HBombToo

Originally posted by faster100


you can do this with a program called partition magic... It will safely let you move partitions, data and create partitions... without messing up your main drive.. your computer will run faster when it doesnt have to try and access 160 gigs for one file.. smaller partitions will make seek time faster IMO... lemme know if you need any other help

very good points here and if you decide to go that route we already have a copy.

HBomb

burdette

It is definitely a "save the data" issue. Not worried that the entire HD would die, only that the system goes south and I'd have to reload. I'm sure I'm paranoid because I've had to reload Win98 so often on the old Gateway. A friend put a second HD in that machine last year and we have all our data on that... so this weekend when I bitchslapped that Gateway and typed "format C:" and ereased its life, all of our digital photos, etc, were safe on the physically-separate D drive.

I want to partition the HD to keep our personal stuff separate from the 'drive' that has XP and applications... but I really hope it isn't an issue with this new machine.

Polkthug is going to help me see if we can load that D drive into the new machine to transfer all our information (the burner on the Gateway doesn't work either, it seems). The retailer says the drive won't fit, HP says it will, so we'll see. If I could get the burner to work this wouldn't be an issue.

We also hopefully didn't get the "DNA Sensor" on this new machine that allowed the Gateway to see my wife coming a mile away. We decided this weekend that she needs to go to work for Microsoft as a beta tester, given that she can find a way to lock up or blow up just about anything.

H.. if you have the partition disk, bring it in and I'll borrow it.

Now... to figure out how to burn DVD movies...

Shizelbs

Another thing you can do if your mobo will support it is get two HD and put them in RAID formation. You get basically two copies of the same drive. If one drive goes down, you still have the other, with everything on it. Then you don't have to do anything when it comes to remembering to move all your files onto the other drive.

stereo55

In a word .... Partion Magic 8.0 software ! LINKY . This program is renowned buy most end users and pros in the PC field for exactly what you need/want to do . Partition Magic is pretty straight forward/user friendly .
If you do a web search , you can find an OEM version for pretty darn cheap verses a retail box version .