Create New Partition

When I bought this PC, Dell had installed the operating system (WinXP Pro) and certain software. Over the years I have added a lot more software. All this was done on the one existing partition of the single hard drive. (IOW, there is only one existing partition covering the whole hard drive.)
But I still am using a very small percentage of the single hard drive's space.
Can I create another partition on this single hard drive (using something like Partition Magic) without messing up the OS and software on the existing single partition?
If not, what is the least painful way of creating a new partition on the hard drive and hopefully saving the software on the single existing partition?

 

Are you sure there is only one partition, as Dell’s for some years now have had hidden recovery partitions. If you have two hidden partitions then changing the layout of the hard drive can disable the auto recovery feature of the machine, so you would no longer be able to return to factory state. Do you have a recovery CD.?
http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/index.htm

Other wise, with partitioning software it is possible to resize the current partition without data loss. However there is always risk in such major operations, so you would be ill advised to attempt it without being fully prepared for disaster. You should have all your data backed up and preferably have an image of your OS and know how to restore it.

 

McTavish and TonyT--You are right. There is a hidden 39MB partition (out of a total 160GB) that Dell put on the hard drive. It is FAT formatted, and I think contains the Diagnostic Tool. I deleted the the content of another partition for Dell's PCRestore (and merged the space into the partition with the OS and software) some time ago since I figured I had changed things too much for PCRestore to be very useful. (And I do have the Dell OS Reinstallation CD.)
Would any of the above info change your advice? I am a little unnerved that both you and PeteC feel things could go wrong.
I know little about partitions and would not want parts (containing files) of the existing (main) partition from which I would take the space for the new partition to be transferred to the new partition.

 

There is definitely a risk in resizing a partition and you should be aware of that. I’ve been doing it for years with various tools and I would not even consider it without have a back up image of the OS in place first.

If you have full backup of all your data and are prepared to reinstall Windows if the worst happens, then you make your choices armestier. A decent partitioning tool will move all data into the resized partition and leave free space for you to create a new partition. Do a defrag before you start.

If you are going to have to buy a partitioning tool (there are free ones but most are either not novice friendly, or trust worthy), you could be cheaper buying a second hard drive.

 

Is there a reason to defrag the disk before using PM?

 

McTavish--I already have Partition Magic 8.
I gather you are saying there is more than a slight risk that taking space from the partition containing my OS and software to create a new partition could cause problems.

 

I have used PM8 for quite a few "manipulations ". I have resized partitions, moved partitions from one drive to another, formatted partitions etc. I have never lost so much as a comma. I have even had a power failure during an operation and it took up where it had left off. I trust the program completely.

However the precautions you take should be directly proportional to how much heartburn you can stand by losing your files.

My 2 cents....

 

You’ll find plenty of cases where people have had no problems, but that does not take away from the fact that resizing is one of the more risky operations. You don’t have to look far to find plenty of people who have had problems.

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-11184-0.html?forumID=48&threadID=165752
http://www2.geek.com/discus/messages/6874/4725.html?998548559
http://www.cybertechhelp.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-23436.html
http://forum.osnn.net/archive/index.php?t-4472.html
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=183772
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Storage/Q_20699737.html
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0604D&L=WIN-HOME&D=0&T=0&P=391


Defragging can just help moving data out of the part of the partition that is going to be reclaimed. It gives PM less to do, which can’t hurt.