hi all


I using the window vista computer disk management to create partition for my hdd but why i can only create another partition for 80gb when my hdd is 250gb with 204gb free space?


what is my problem and how can i create a partition that more than 80GB?

anyone know please help me!

Hello Alwb1986,

I'm pretty sure the reason you can't make a partition larger than 80 gigabytes is because your data is spread throughout your hard drive. Since you are partitioning after you have data all over the drive, you can only create a partition in contiguous empty space after the last bit of saved data on the drive. I'll try to draw a diagram of what I'm explaining.

Say this is an empty hard drive:

|---------------------- all empty space------------------------- |

You would be able to put a split anywhere on the drive because you have no data to worry about.

Now say this is your drive. The green lines are bits of data, the dashes are empty space, and the arrows point where you would be able to start a new partition because Windows won't let you split the data up for obvious reasons:

|------- |||||------------- ||||||||<>---------80 gigs-------- |


I would suggest one of two options, the first being less complicated.

1. Defragment your hard drive and hope it moves all your data as close to the beginning of the drive as possible and then check how large of a partition you can have.

2. Save all your important data to CD/DVD/external drive, then format the drive, partition the drive the way you want before installing Windows, then install Windows.

Hope that helps!