Partitioning after the fact

[Frog]

So, the first hour or two with a new computer has brought up some issues.

This is a new cheap machine for the reception area. A refurb HP running 64 bit Windows 7 Professional. Not the machine I use for most tasks, but nice to show custys stuff and sometimes open their files with them right there.
It came with a bigger hard drive than I needed, but I gave it no thought until I learned that my old Photoshop 7 does not like drives bigger than 1T and throws a "Scratch Disks Full" error.

So, I have virtually nothing to back up as all I put on it was my graphics programs and a folder of 7500 fonts.
What's the best way to go with a (hopefully free) partition application? I can go the simple route of two partitions, making the C drive about 500G, and keeping the OS and applications on it, and then leaving the bulk for scratch disk and data.

[Gilligan]

Download Ubuntu and burn a cd/dvd (not sure what it is these days) and then boot off of it.

In there you will find Gparted and it will do the job with a nice graphical interface.

You might want to do a defrag before, not sure how important that is though.

[Frog]

Now you're talkin'.

As I explained in a little more detail in the other thread, this is much more the direction I thought that I would take to give PS a smaller drive on which to reside.

[Frog]

I assume that I can also do this and boot off a usb drive as well, yes? This assumes that I can easily boot from usb. I'll have to check on that. (as soon as 126 updates are done! lol!)

I do remember that when I mistakenly left the PS7 cd in the drawer, it didn't want to boot. So, it may be the same with a usb. As I said, I'll check that in a while.

[Gilligan]

Yeah, my Ubuntu is on a flash drive... I use it VERY often in the repair end of things.  USB drive makes it faster as well as a writable storage space if I do need to quickly save something out of it.

I don't remember the hurdles to get it on the jump drive, but I'm sure there are less today.  I also know that SOME systems give me issues with the jump drive vs CD/DVD method.  I almost never have issues with the CD/DVD method... but I usually opt to try the USB first because of it's benefits when it does work.

Same for a few other Boot CD utils I use, I have them on Jump drives as well and try to use them first.

[Frog]

The usb thing may be more trouble.
When I click on the download, it goes directly to my burn program, so it appears to really be set up for that.

[Gilligan]

It's just an ISO file.  They may have some sort of util that will dump it to a USB... I don't recall... many moons ago.

[Frog]

It talks about usb, so I'm sure that there is a way that's not too involved, but in the meantime, I burned a dvd.

Now, eventually, when the Widows downloads are all installed, I may get a chance to play with gparted. A simple two partitions. c for OS and applications, d for data and scratch.

[Gilligan]

Remember though it's two partitions it really affords you ZERO protection.

Only true benefit is that you can reinstall windows and not have to worry about backing up your data on that other partition.

I have never really been a fan of partitioned drives in windows.

[Frog]

I'm not looking for protection, just a smaller drive.
Now, you mention re-installing Windows. Is this part of the routine with this particular partition program?

In the past, when I used an old Partition Magic (old enough to be on floppies) except for the standard warnings of backing everything up just in case, nothing was lost, no re-installs. It just nudged the OS and applications to the newer, smaller partition that now made up the "C" drive.

[Gilligan]

No, that was just an option if you wanted to utilize that 1.5TB somewhere else and just toss in that 350? or 500 in there.

[ScreenFoo]

Any system utility like that will nag you about backups you should have made before you hit 'OK'. 

So wouldn't PS7 have issues with anything over 32 gigs?
That was the last allocation limit that wreaked havoc with drives and partitions.


Frog's going to be dangerous by the end of this thread.   

[Frog]

So wouldn't PS7 have issues with anything over 32 gigs?
That was the last allocation limit that wreaked havoc with drives and partitions.

Runnin' fine on my main 64 bit machine, but as I also said in another thread, the drive on that machine is smaller. The problem with PS7 is that it can't deal with a drive larger than 1T.
It throws a misleading error message about full scratch disks, but a little interweb snooping came up the the size issue as the true culprit.

[ScreenFoo]

If the free size is the issue, there's an easy kludge--Run command as administrator, and make a really big file with fsutil.


You'll BARELY have to use the command line. 

[Frog]

PS7 simply won't initialize if installed on a drive larger than 1T.
Back in 2002 it wasn't an issue, (and until November 2013, it wasn't an issue with me either!)