Repartitioning the HDD in my T410

[Mr. Hamilton]

Hello!

This is my first post in this forum ... and I'm looking forward to interesting discussions.

By now, I need your help concerning a repartitioning procedure.

On my hard disk drive of my T410 ThinkPad there are three primary partitions:
- SYSTEM_DRV (1,17 GB NTFS)
- Windows7_OS / C: (454,82 GB NTFS)
- Lenovo Recovery / Q: (9,77 GB NTFS)

Windows 7 is installed in its 64 bit version.

Now, I want to split up the Windows7_OS partition in order to put personal documents, music, etc. onto another partition, separated from the operating system -- i.e., minimize the Windows7_OS partition and creating a new one after it.

My questions are:

1. If I want to insert only one more partition: Does it make a difference whether to create another primary partition (i.e. afterwards there are 4 primary partitions) ... or to create an extended partition with a logical volume in it?

2. Can I performe this repartition completely with the standard Windows 7 tools -- ideally only with "Disk Management"?

3. Is there (at least a minimal) risk that the original ThinkPad boot menu and the MBR could get damaged in this scenario (blue ThinkVantage Button / F11 in the boot process)? -- And: Will it still be possible to access the Lenovo Recovery (on the last partition) from this boot menu in order to restore the default factory configuration?

4. Are there other aspects I should pay attention to in this context?

Background:
I did many repartitions in the past, but I am not very well versed in the Lenovo recovery system / boot process and even not in Windows 7.
And right now, I need a good and easy, non-time consuming solution that I can perform straight-forward -- without any special tools oder tricks.

I am looking forward to any assistance you can offer! -- Thanks in advance for your help!

Regards,
Mr. Hamilton

[ausmike]

Giday Mr Hamilton;
Welcome to the TP Forum ! ... and hope you enjoy your TP410 series machine - they are great and very reliable machines....

I would higly recommend (after reading your posts) for secondary storage is to get a 2ND HD adaptor. Its very cheap and also saves your Factory Hard Drive .... and in long term will pay off (incase you ever have to do a 'recover' from backups)

Here is a link (forum sponsors above
http://newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?mai ... &cPath=2_7

or ....this is what I got...
http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/cont ... u_area=yes

Or If this is not your thoughts , I would invest in Partition Softwares Apps eg parition magic etc ,,,,

Cheers

[Mr. Hamilton]

Hi!

Thank you for the information.

I know that I can add another HDD to my ThinkPad this way ... but that's not what I want to do.

I would be glad if you or anybody could answer to my questions.

Thanks in advance!

Regards,
Mr. Hamilton

[killer]

As ausmike suggested, use Partition Magic to repartition your HDD. You'll have to pay for it.

[ausmike]

.........ummm ,,, ok

1) NO
2) NO , no safely !
3) YES - hugest risk is damage to MBR in Win7x64 as its not ever recoverable AFAIK...

hope that helps....