Partitioning An External H D D

[bdenner]

I've just bought and about to connect a 1Tb external HDD to my DeskTop via an eSATA interface. It's primarily for data backup and to mirror the internal drive.

I want to partition it into 4 x 250Gb drives. Do I need special software to do this or will day to day packages handle external drive partitioning.

Thank you.

[thaimite]

Although I have always been a fan of Partition magic, There are several free partitioning tools on the Internet.

I have not tried any, but you may like to look at these links

http://partitionlogic.org.uk/

http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/pa...oneditors.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_disk_...ioning_software

If you have an old version of windows (pre XP) you should even have a copy of the command prompt program FDISK which would do your job

[SpaceKadet]

Assuming that you are using Windows XP, you don't need any external tools to partition and format your new drive. You can do everything with the built in XP tools.

Just right click "My Computer", select "Manage" and click on "Disk Management" under "Storage". You'll then see your new hard drive marked as "Unallocated". Right click on this and you can partition, format, assign drive letter, etc to your new drive.

[boney]

I've just bought and about to connect a 1Tb external HDD to my DeskTop via an eSATA interface. It's primarily for data backup and to mirror the internal drive.

I want to partition it into 4 x 250Gb drives. Do I need special software to do this or will day to day packages handle external drive partitioning.

Thank you.

Partition Magic is so easy, But you have to pay for it!

[JetsetBkk]

I've just bought and about to connect a 1Tb external HDD to my DeskTop via an eSATA interface. It's primarily for data backup and to mirror the internal drive.

I want to partition it into 4 x 250Gb drives. Do I need special software to do this or will day to day packages handle external drive partitioning.

Thank you.

Why partition? I used to have 2 x 500 GB drives each partitioned into 3 drives. Now I have replaced them with a 1.5 TB drive and a 1.0 TB backup drive, and they are both just one huge NTFS drive each, with the same folder names from the original 3 partitions.

I used to think partitioning was in some way safer, but now I don't, and the PC appears to have less problems dealing with one big drive than three smaller ones.

[astral]

I use Paragon Partition Manager these days.

It came free with a magazine.

Just as easy to use as my old Partition Magic.

[lopburi3]

Windows will do it without any need for external programs. But I am in agreement that there is really no need these days as computers and disks are so fast now defrag of even TB is easy - and it is painless to do on a scheduled basis in Windows 7.