Partitioning/Multiboot Windows XP without formatting

[chancer101]

Hi,

I've recently purchased a new PC which came pre-installed with
Windows XP on a 120GB Hard disk.

What I would like to do is somehow partition this into four
partitions (poss of different sizes, but doesn't matter).
For the following purposes, which I would like to keep
separate

1) Visual Studio 6
2) Visual Studio .NET
3) J2EE
4) General Office/Email/HTML development.

I understand this can be done without formatting the hard
disk, which seems the simplest way to do it.

Any advice grateful received....


Paul

 

[bcastner]

Use Partition Magic, version 8 or better.

 

[chancer101]

I recall someone telling me it could be done using Windows XP Pro.

I don't need different OS on the different partitions, I just want to separate the stuff out so it doesn't intefere or slow down other parts.

Paul
paul101paul@hotmail.com

 

[linney]

I'd prefer the simple method (you mentioned) but you can read this if you want to become totally confused.


300415 - A Description of the Diskpart Command-Line Utility

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;300415&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

 

[Fablanta]

Hi Chancer101,

I would use Partition Magic to tackle this problem. The maximum number of primary partitions you can have is 4 (or 3 plus one extended partition) so you would be just at this limit.

Assuming you have all 4 app groups currently installed I would then install bootmagic (a version of which should ship with partition magic) to enable me to choose which partition to boot up from.

I would then run PM to shrink the existing partition to the size I want then copy and resize 3 other partitions (hiding the 3 extra partitions might be a good idea as well if you don't intend to share data).

Then using BootMagic to boot from each in turn you would have to uninstall the undesired apps from each partition.

The only thing I am unsure of is whether there is a version of BM designed to run with XP, if not you would have to have a boot floppy with BM on whenever you wanted to change partition. Another drawback is that if you choose the hidden partitions version you would not be able to share data easily.

Hope this helped more than hindered

DkA

 

[price351]

Boot Magic works fine with xp