[b1caez01]

I am new to this partitioning business, but from what I read, I thought that I was pretty safe to set up XP in its own wee garden, partition the hard drive for various purposes and then get on with it. If XP were to freak out, all I would need to do would be to reformat the XP partition and bobs your uncle... I used Partition Magic 8.

Nope, wiped out my whole hard drive.

1. was I mis-informed?
2. was I just plain stupid [go easy on me on this one]
3. did I misunderstand something?
4. how safe are partitions, anyway?
5. should I do it again, only the next time...do what?

...Al

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I'm assuming your hard drive was previously a single partition containing Windows, and then you decided it would be a good idea to create a second partition on which to create a backup image?

That's what I did, and it worked for me, but you have to know what your telling PM to do and what consequences it will have for you and your system.

You have to tell PM to RESIZE the existing 'C' partition to a smaller size, then, when that's completed, there will be some 'unallocated space' which was previously occupied by 'C'. This unallocated space can now be partitioned and formatted either with PM or (preferrably) with the XP Computer Management Console which is accessed from Control Panel/Administrative Tools.

However, it's far easier to leave drive C as single partition and buy a second hard disk for backup purposes, then you will never be tempted to mess with PM and your C drive again.

[pip22]

I'm assuming your hard drive was previously a single partition containing Windows, and then you decided it would be a good idea to create a second partition on which to create a backup image?

That's what I did, and it worked for me, but you have to know what your telling PM to do and what consequences it will have for you and your system.

You have to tell PM to RESIZE the existing 'C' partition to a smaller size, then, when that's completed, there will be some 'unallocated space' which was previously occupied by 'C'. This unallocated space can now be partitioned and formatted either with PM or (preferrably) with the XP Computer Management Console which is accessed from Control Panel/Administrative Tools.

However, it's far easier to leave drive C as single partition and buy a second hard disk for backup purposes, then you will never be tempted to mess with PM and your C drive again.

[b1caez01]

Thanks...I've played with PM8 before with no problems. I have just never re-formatted in the way that I did. I was under the impression that a partition was protected...especially, when at the start of the process, in the DOS screen, it asks if you want the previous smaller partion formatted...in my case it was around 97Gb...I said yes, then it went and re-formatted the whole drive! Bad boy!

And I am aware of the extra hard drive issue...got one, been there, done that...thought that I would try something different this time...I'm always experimenting, trying to find a better mouse trap.

[pip22]

I have never actually used PM to perform the formatting process, only used it to manipulate/create new partitions. Much safer to then complete the job (ie formatting) from within Windows XP using Microsoft's own Computer Management Console. That way it would have been impossible to accidentally format the OS partition - so in that sense I suppose you could say the OS partition is "protected". But in DOS mode it's not.

Whenever you need to format a non-system partition, it's always safer to do it within Windows -- repeat that to yourself 100 times!

[b1caez01]

...WILL DO...