i purchased an hp zx5280us from Best Buy last weekend and had them do their "system customization" which included some OS patches (sp2 and others). At the time I forgot to ask them to partition the hard drive for me. Now I have this 80 gb hard drive that I want to partition into 20 and 60 without having to reinstall the os (and lose sp2 and the other patches, not to mention resetting all my settings, drivers, and software, albeit not much, installed so far, etc.) So, the big question... is there a way to partition, for free (hey i am a college student, you know how money is), my hard drive without losing the data? I have searched previous posts and they mention using the windows xp discs (i have what shipped with the computer) to boot and "start" the installation procedure and set the partitions from within that. If I do that, will it need to reformat? I know of fdisk, but can that create NTFS partitions? If anyone knows a way to safely, freely partition the drive whilst keeping the data safe, I am open to your suggestions. Thanks!

I don't know of a way of doing it freely, but you can do it with the XP disc during installation. Unfortunately, that probably means reinstalling the OS. FDisk won't do, since creating partitions with that can damage or destroy your data, meaning you'd need to reinstall anyway. The only thing I can think of is partitioning software, which can create partitions without damaging data, but that costs upward $70 CAD. Actually, I had the same problem, since my computer came with preinstalled software, and I had already begun setting the settings. I decided to use 1 partition. Sorry I couldn't be of more help. Laogeodritt

i have partition magic, that works great, you can split partitions up to as many as you want without losing data. u can also merge them or distribute the space between them. u wont lose any data as it will only make a new partition out of empty space. email me and i help u further!

If you are talking about saving your existing data, the very best way to partition and also keep your precious data intact is to use Partition Magic version 8. This $ 70 plus program can be searched for and purchased for about $25 with free shipping at Pricewatch.com

u wont lose any data as it will only make a new partition out of empty space. email me and i help u further! Why e-mail? Why not share it with the rest of us? After all, this is a help Forum for everybody. i_XpUser