Hi I have a 500gb external hard drive ... i have a spare 100gb & i want to use around 30gb to partition in Fat32 in order to back up my PS3. I have tried to use Disk Management - no joy (no option to partition) i have tried Partitionmagic - this will only let me create a new partition of about 7.1mb !! (no option to create bigger/samller) I dont want to refomat hard drive & start again as i have too much saved data. Any ideas ? André

Well first off let me say that if the data on the External is your only copy of the data you are making a mistake. You should keep at least TWO copies of any data you wish to keep. If PM won't create the desired partition you may need to defrag the drive before attempting the operation. What version of PM are you using? Is the External drive a SATA drive? Older versions of PM don't work on SATA drives. What service pack is installed in WinXP?

From what you describe I have to come to the conclusion you have no free space to then partition. You would have to first resize the disk. You can not do that with Disk Management but you can with Partition Magic. You would want to shrink your existing partition to then create empty space that you would then partition and format. I HIGHLY recommend you attempt no such operations until you have a full and tested as good backup. Shrinking with data is a risky operation Example of Oxymoron: Person who is pro life and anti sex education. Education is key to prevention. Prevent conception you prevent abortion. Abstinence training clearly isn't working.