Cannot Partition HardDisk....Smart guys Help Me!

[Ashis]

Hi Guys,
I have got a new Laptop from My bSchool....
Its HP Compaq nx 7300
Pre-installed Windows XP Professional (Licenced)

It has two partition: C:26 GB &
D:48GB

But I want to repartition the disk into;
1) C: - 18 GB (18432 MB)
2) D: - 12 GB (12288 MB)
3) E: - 20 GB (20480 MB)
4) F: - 20 GB (20480)
5) G: - 4 GB (4096 MB)

I am trying to do that without formating the C drive & installing the Windows XP again as I don't have the recovery CD.
Installing a pirated version is not an option.

So I am using Partition Magic.....
But I am unable to make any partition less than 8 GB.
Even if I am giving the partition size to less than 8 GB, partition Magic is Changing it to 8 GB.
I tried to partition the C drive too but I got an error stating that the cluster list is too long.
The cluster size of both the partition is 4KB.
In fact my Desktop PC is having the same cluster size & I am able to partition drive there.

Is there something to do with BIOS?
Can something like minimum Drive size be set in BIOS?

Help My partition my 80 GB Drive.

Sorry I missed out:
The Drives are NTFS & as far as recovery files is concern its in the D drive in a hidden folder.

[vish786]

bios has nothing to do with partitioning the hdd disk,

i think norton ghost should solve ur problem(of not loosing the original copy), not sure though , but its always better to format directly, instead of partitionin an existing partition on drive trust me.

[pimpom]

I'm surprised that your laptop does not have a hidden partition containing the manufacturer's recovery files. But as your total of 74GB is about right for a formatted 80GB drive, I guess you have no such partition.

Before you attempt anything else, I strongly suggest you make a backup of your C: drive. If you have a DVD-writer or at least a CD-writer, you can use Norton Ghost or something similar to write the Ghost file directly to disc. Or make a Ghost backup in your D: drive and copy it to an external HDD.

You didn't say anything about your file system. If it's FAT32, 4K is much smaller than the default size for your existing partitions, and will result in a huge FAT file size. Have you tried changing the cluster size to 8K or 16K ? That will reduce the FAT size. As you probably know, increasing cluster size will produce some waste of disk space, but if it solves your problem .....

Also, have you tried resizing the C: drive instead of dividing it ? If you do that, defrag it first. If your files are scattered all over the 26GB partition, it may produce complications while resizing.

[dabster]

Originally Posted by vish786

bios has nothing to do with partitioning the hdd disk,

i think norton ghost should solve ur problem, not sure though , but its always better to format directly, instead of partition an existing drive trust me.

Yeah, It can be problem at times, You just don't know whether partition magic will be successful in doing the partitioning...later you may loose yr partition data....

[Ashis]

I don't have a problem with cluster size as I had the same cluster size with my desktop PC...
But the matter of concern is the error "Cluster size is too long" I really don't understand that.

[pimpom]

Yes, you do have a problem with cluster size. Your error message clearly said so. What is not clear is whether something else is causing a problem with something that normally should not be a problem.

Remember that those of us who are trying to help you are making educated guesses without seeing your computer. If we were sitting in front of your computer, we could try this and that, and perhaps quickly narrow down the problem.