how do i create a new partition without formatting in xp

[Shade-of-Grey]

^ title

i want to dual boot ubuntu on like a 10gb partition, just for tinkering. i dont want to have to format.

[Maxey]

^ title

i want to dual boot ubuntu on like a 10gb partition, just for tinkering. i dont want to have to format.
I believe you can do that with a program like Partition Magic, but I'm not 100% sure so don't quote me on that.

[Shade-of-Grey]

how would i then install ubuntu, just like normal and select the partition? i've only installed it on the full disk after formatting before

[Shade-of-Grey]

http://lifehacker.com/399871/easeus-creates-and-manages-hard-drive-partitions-for-free

lifehacker rocks my socks

[Cheeto]

Boot up your Ubuntu CD and use GParted. Or you can just stick the disc in while booted under Windows and it'll set up a 10GB image file to dual boot from.

[PanFrie]

yea, the newer version of Ubuntu you can actually install from windows and it does everything for you (no joke, it's fuckin sweet).

also, there's a feature in windows that for some reason most people don't even know about:

right click on "My Computer"
click "Manage"
on the left pane, click "Disk Management"

from there, you can format entire drives, format / delete / resize (sometimes) partitions, change the drive letter / label. thats usually what i do when i format my computers. make my base C drive for windows (20 gigs for xp, 35 for vista), with no other partitions on the drive, then make the partitions from in windows when im installing stuff (like drivers)

[Face]

Pan, where is the option for partitions?

I believe the windows disk needs to be used if you want Windows to create a partition for you.

[PanFrie]

nope it doesn't. at the bottom, you should see a bunch of bars, and on the left of each one, should say "Disk 0", "Disk 1", "Disk 2", etc... Blue means its currently formatted, and can pretty much just be deleted / renamed, and sometimes shrunk. If the bar is black, when it's unallocated space. Right click on it, (i forget the exact buttons here, cause i dont have any unused space on my hard drives) and look for something about formatting it into a new partition. a box should appear asking you what options you want for it (fat32, NTFS, size, name, that sorta stuff). Click Format (maybe its "OK"?). it should start, and you can close all those windows and let it do its thing while your doing other stuff.

[AFG]

whats a good number of gigs should i set aside for a ubuntu partition on drive C? Most of my shit is in D, drive C is only for OS so I got a lot of room...

[Cheeto]

whats a good number of gigs should i set aside for a ubuntu partition on drive C? Most of my shit is in D, drive C is only for OS so I got a lot of room...

10GB should cover you pretty well for experimenting, 20GB if you might wanna actually install a bunch of shit and documents on it.

[AFG]

10GB should cover you pretty well for experimenting, 20GB if you might wanna actually install a bunch of shit and documents on it.

thx, i got a shitload of space so 20 it is!

[Koobazaur]

To clarify PanFrie's "sometimes," you can change partition sizes without any reformats if you convert your disk to a dynamic disk (or something like that). Right click on it and choose that. Then you can screw around with your partition sizes to your heart's content without losing any data!

[Guy Montag]

Dynamic disks can't be read by any other OS. In theory you could convert to dynamic, change your partitions around, and use this hack (http://thelazyadmin.com/blogs/thelazyadmin/archive/2007/01/17/Converting-Dynamic-Disks-Back-to-Basic-Disks.aspx) to convert back to basic, but since you should do a full backup before converting back to basic anyway, I would just use another tool to shrink your existing partition and add the new one.

[PanFrie]

To clarify PanFrie's "sometimes," you can change partition sizes without any reformats if you convert your disk to a dynamic disk (or something like that). Right click on it and choose that. Then you can screw around with your partition sizes to your heart's content without losing any data!

so THAT'S how that works. thanks.