Partitioning problems

I need to create a partition (10 gigs or so on a 80 gig)
on a machine with only one hard drive. I follow help file
instructions on using disk management tool. I can not
right click as per help file on unused area of disc as it
shows entire disk as being used (default blue color). I
tried defragmenting first but no luck there. The disc is
defragmented and mostly empty. It was just formatted and
a clean copy of XP Pro was installed and updated. How can
I partition a portion of the disk.

Free space on a drive should not be confused with unused area. If the
partition or all the partitions take up the entire drive, there is no unused
space. XP has no means of resizing. It can only delete partitions to
create unused space. If you only have one partition, then that is not
feasible for you as it would cost you all of your data.

However, there are several third party applications that can resize a
partition, thereby giving you the unused space in which to create more
partitions; Partition Magic from PowerQuest, www.powerquest.com can handle
the chore of resizing and creating new partitions for you.

--
Michael Solomon MS-MVP
Windows Shell/User
Backup is a PC User's Best Friend
DTS-L.Org: http://www.dts-l.org/

"Blaine D" <malachiteNOSPAM@gci.net> wrote in message
news:081501c38d4f$09963e80$a401280a@phx.gbl...

> I need to create a partition (10 gigs or so on a 80 gig)
> on a machine with only one hard drive. I follow help file
> instructions on using disk management tool. I can not
> right click as per help file on unused area of disc as it
> shows entire disk as being used (default blue color). I
> tried defragmenting first but no luck there. The disc is
> defragmented and mostly empty. It was just formatted and
> a clean copy of XP Pro was installed and updated. How can
> I partition a portion of the disk.

Blaine D wrote:

> I need to create a partition (10 gigs or so on a 80 gig)
> [...]

I never tried to resize a partition with WinXP tools since they are too
limited. I suggest you use Partition Magic. I use this tool now since
years with Win9x, WinNT, Win2000 and WinXP and it works fine. Much more
features are included.

--
Georges Heinesch <void@geohei.lu>, Luxembourg
PGP RSA & DH/DSS public key on request and on public servers