Partition Magic not working

[minduka]

Hi

I am trying to partition my laptop harddrive but i get this error: A new partition could not be created on drive 1. Is it some kind of lock on the laptop? I am not sure of the model of the drive. Any solutions? Thanks

[GroundZero3]

what verison of parition magic? fat32, ntfs, etc?

[minduka]

v8, xp home edition (nfts) etc?

[Jarhed7276]

Do you have free space on the hard drive? You need free space before you can create a new partition otherwise there is nowhere to create the partition.

[minduka]

of course. its a 60gb that i just bought. There is more than enough space

[yeadon563]

I'd like to install Linspire on my slave drive. I've used partition magic before, but I have a problem. I'd like to make a 5gig partition but partition magic only give space in megabites. What good is a utility if it doesn't read in gigs but megabites?

I mean it is 2004 already.

Yeadon563

[Jarhed7276]

Sorry if I sounded condescending. It wasn't my intent. It was just that that was the only circumstance that I could forsee that error. Then again I don't know much about laptops.

[minduka]

I was being sarcastic (which is one of my hobbies . no need to apologize.

till now. I haven't had much help. I woud like to partition magic because I paid for it. I think it reads in megabytes so you can make partitions smaller than 1gb? just a thought.

[FatalException]

In response to yeadon563, 1000 megabytes equals 1 gigabyte (1000MB = 1GB). Regardless of if PartitionMagic uses gigabytes or megabytes, you should be able to enter either 5GB for the new partition size or 5000 MB... both mean exactly the same thing.

As far as not being able to make the new partition on your laptop hard drive... The partition that already exists on your hard drive is likely 60GB.

Here's an easy way to think of things... A hard drive is like a large building or warehouse that you can store stuff in. Now, in order to use space efficiently, the drive requires a partition (FAT32, NTFS, ext3, XFS, etc.) This is kinda like the drive's way of putting cubicles in the warehouse to keep the stuff in the warehouse separated and organized. What is likely going on is you have all 60GB of your drive partitioned for Windows in NTFS or FAT32. If this is the case, then the "warehouse" is already filled up with cubicles, regardless of if those cubicles are full or empty.

In order to fix this, you must resize your C drive partition to make REALLY empty space to create the new partition. Doing this WILL require a reboot when you click "apply" in PM 8 (Partition Magic 8). Once the partition is resized and your computer has booted back into windows, open up PM 8 again and tell it to make your new partition...

It's kinda like subdividing the warehouse with a big wall in the middle for two companies to use (or in this case, two drive letters and two partitions).

[minduka]

that makes sense. I will try that and post the results. Thanks