Hard drive

Installed new hard drive 250 gb. Tried using shareware program which works like Norton Ghost to clone my 40gb hard drive to the 250gb. It worked but, it created a partition I think, in my 250gb hard drive. I went to disk management, there it sed that I had used 37.25gb and 200gb was unallocated.

How do I make it all one hard drive with no partitions??????????

 

You can try it using Disk Management but if the partition is seen as a system partition it won't let you remove it. You'll have to use a 3rd party tool like Partition Magic. If that is a clone of your OS you're better off keeping that partition right where it is and use the remaining 200 Gigs for what every you want. Disk Management will allow you to format it (and create additional partitions), & assign drive letters. Right click My Computer, select Manage to get there.

 

OK I need some info on partitions.

I probably wont use all 250gb, so is it worth while creating three partitions, 1 for the OS, 1 for applications and 1 for personal files. What are the benefits of doing so, or are there none.

Also how do I know which files and folders are for the OS and which are for applications. Is it basically that all of C:WINDOWS, is OS files and all of Crogram files is for applications?

Also would it be better if I reinstalled everything onto the 250gb hard drive rather than using a program such as Norton Ghost, and if I did reinstall everything, would I be able to just copy my personal files over using Windows Explorer?????

Many Questions, I need answers please.

Thanks

 

first of all if you don't want to loose your data on the drive while making new partitions i'd advice you to use 3d party partition progs like disk director from acronis. with it you can easily repartition your drive and make as many partitions as you want.
i agree with you it's woth to make 3 partitions you've mentioned above, for the os i'd make 20Gb, for applications 60gb, and the rest for other staff(fotos, videos, music, etc.)

 

OK Ive made three partitions as suggested a 20gb partition for the OS, a 60gb partition for the applications and the rest for other files.

I installed windows and some basic software, but all of the software is installed in the same folder as the OS but I would like them to be installed in the applications partition.

Would it be possible to simply copy the program files folder????????

 

Well part 1 is, you already installed windows so you won't be able to delete partitions... well you could but you still will be stuck with 2! windows installer itself had a FDISK disk manager! back up some files and make the disk clean so you can format it to 1 partition, then after the reformatting windows will automatically install itself! maybe the best solution but hey... just thinking of ways out!

If you have some back up device like a second hard drive, just back up your files and reformat and reinstall windows on the 250GB drive!

 

Thanks for replying so quickly.

I actually deleted the whole partition on the 250gb hard drive, and instead created the three partitions as explained.

Just wondering how to put the application files into the application partition. Could I simple copy "Program Files" into the application partition from the OS partition??????????

 

Also what are the differences between NTFS and FAT32 and other file systems, why are they used rather than NTFS and under what circumstances?????