How To Partition Your Hard Disk

Oh ! wait a minute before we proceed further I have to tell you about the Primary partition and Extended partition.In a hard disk when you make the first partition where windows (Operating system) will be installed becomes the primary partition, which means this is the active partition from which your operating system will boot.The remaining un-allocated space of your hard disk becomes the Extended partition.Inside this extended partition you can have as many logical partitions you want. As shown below picture,

the part of the disk enclosed within the green colored box is your extended partition, and as you can see inside that extended partition other partitions are there which are called as logical partitions, you can have as many logical partitions as per your needs. But one more thing, you can have as many primary partitions as active partitions if you opt for multi boot disk that is installing more than one operating system.Lets assume we are going to install only one OS , so how do I go about partitioning my 500GB hard disk

1   .Primary partition 1 for the OS = Size 100GB I feel that’s sufficient for the OS and program files I might install.
2.  After creating this partition, i would create extended partition for the remaining space.
3.  Once done, within this extended partition, I would start making the logical partitions as per my needs as follows
1. I would allocate about 20GB for DOCUMENTS.
2. Than i would allocate 80 GB for PICTURES
3. Than another 80 GB for my collections of MP3 music files.
4. Than another 100 GB for my Movie collection
5. Than another 80 GB for my software back ups.since you never know when you need that software to re install so it a good idea to back up your system drivers,Mother drivers (don’t rely on your optical disks, one scratch and its unreadable) so its a good idea to back up your drivers that comes with your new PC be copied and kept in folders inside your backup partition.
6. I usually create another partition of 20GB and name it TRIAL or EXTRA, this is where I keep my miscellaneous items like some downloaded pictures or PSD files that I work on and when done I delete the files, just like a extra huge dust bin or like a temporary transit point.That takes up about 480GB of may space and i still have around 20 GB more free space, this you can allot according to your needs, for example if you have too many video collection allocate more space or if you have too many Music or Photo collection you can allocate the space accordingly.

Well this is just an example of how I would have done with a 500GB HDD.You can have your own way of allocating and naming the partitions, or even create some more extra partitions.
What do you benefit by doing this partitioning ? Remember each is separate and isolated from the main OS partition so your files are safe in their own partition. Should anything go wrong with your primary partition and the system collapses or refuses to boot or system crash, no worry, you can easily format your primary partition and re install windows without loosing any of files ,music ,videos, backups, they will remain unharmed within their partition. That’s the beauty and safety of Partitioning your Hard disk.With a dedicated partition for the operating system and programs, you can create an exact image of the entire partition and restore it as it was when backed up in the event of a disaster like system crash, virus infection. How to create image and restore your C drive , you can find  here in this post.

There are a lot of free software available for disk partitioning,but among all, One that stands out as far as functionality, reliability is concerned is MINITOOLS PARTITION WIZARD.I have been using this software for many years now, never had it given me any problem, did the job neatly every time.
Mini tools Partition wizard Home edition is a free disk utility that has powerful partition management capabilities, compatible to both 32-bit and 64-bit windows installations.Partition wizard Home edition is a great freeware that can both simplify and enhance window’s capabilities. Its an all in one disk partition manager and does its job well.
Its interface is very clean with pleasing colors and easily understandable.Home users can perform complicated partition operations by this powerful but free Partition manager to manage their Hard disk partitions.

Features of Partition wizard Home editions:

•  .Resizing partitions
•   Copying partitions
•   Create partitions
•  .Delete partitions
•   Format partitions
•   Convert partitions
•   Explore partitions
•   Hide partition
•   Change drive letter
•   Set active partition
•   Convert dynamic disk to Basic disk
•   Surface test
•   Change partition serial number
•  Change Partition type ID
•  Partition recovery
•  Perform critical tests and maintenance duties like surface test.
•  It supports most disk types including removable storage devices like flash drives and memory card.
• .You can format your flash drive FAT partition to NTFS.
•  You can wipe your hard disk completely , it offers several levels of disk-wiping.

This Partition wizard Home edition is a very powerful tool and does the job neatly. This is a must have tool for every home user and its completely free.

 Download MINITOOL PARTITION WIZARD

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Posted By: Ben Jamir