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 Post subject: Partitioning question
 Post Posted: Fri Aug 23, 2013 11:17 am 
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I purchased a new 1TB usb3 external drive a couple of weeks ago. I immediately partitioned it in half and starting backing up data on both partitions. Now I want to partition just one of those "halves" into half, leaving that entire disc with 3 partitions: one of 50% of the space and two with 25% of the space.

I will probably delete all of the data in the partition that is to be split into half, I have that all backed up elsewhere. What about the data in the other partition, that partition will not be touched, moved, or re-sized in anyway? Is there a chance that I could wind up with all of that data somehow deleted?

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Acadia

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 Post Posted: Fri Aug 23, 2013 3:06 pm 
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What are you using to do the partitioning?

An external / third party tool or disk management via windows 7/8

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 Post Posted: Fri Aug 23, 2013 3:13 pm 
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Michael wrote:
What are you using to do the partitioning?

An external / third party tool or disk management via windows 7/8

Oops, sorry should have mentioned that. I will be using the ONLY program that I have ever used to partition my discs, the built-in Windows Disk Management (Win7).

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Acadia

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 Post Posted: Fri Aug 23, 2013 8:15 pm 
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In theory nothing SHOULD happen at all to the partition that is NOT being split. I say 'in theory' as any time that you are restructuring a drive something could happen. That being said I have never personally had anything happen.

Through Disk Management I would try shrinking the partition that you want to split. Once the partition is shrunk to the desired size you just create a new partition on what would then show as unallocated space. The data that was on the partition before shrinking should still be fine.

There IS one thing that could get in the way. Every partition has sectors that cannot be moved. Shrinking a partition will only work to the point where these sectors are encountered. Say that you have a partition with 400gig free space and want to split it to two 200gig partitions. If those unmovable sectors reside within the first 200gig of the partition there will be no issue. If the unmovable sectors reside within the second 200gig of the partition you will not be able to shrink past those sectors.

My advice would be to go to Disk Management and right click on the partition and select 'Shrink Volume'. See if it reports the ability to do the shrink that you want. If it shows this ability then just enter a value that is half of the partition and go. Create a new basic partition on the now unused space and you are set.

If the amount of space available to shrink is not enough then you would need to wipe the entire partition and then create both new basic partitions. In this case, if there is enough space on the partition that is to remain at 50% of the drive, you can just create a 'temp folder' and copy the data. Do your kill and repartition then copy the data back.

One last thought is that, if your system drive has enough free space, you might want to consider copying ALL data from the external just in case of the slight possibility of the shrink and partitioning going south.

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 Post Posted: Fri Aug 23, 2013 10:57 pm 
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There's almost no change the partition you aren't fooling with will be touched. Normally it's painless but it's a computer right so you know what to do.

Jay's advice is good the only thing that I might do additionally is defrag the partition you want to split and consolidate free space.

You really shouldn't have any problems. I've done this many times with no problems. Hopefully, you won't be the first [nice, uh?].

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