My A+Exam Cram 6th Edition goes into depth about Disk Management and the types of partitions you can use in Windows. This brief article discusses how to define partitions while installing Windows Vista. The process is essentially the same when installing Windows 7.
During the installation of Windows Vista, you can create, delete, or extend partitions as mentioned in step 6 of the Windows Vista Installation Video/Article. There are several options; here are a few:
– To use all the space in the disk, either create a new partition that encompasses the entire disk or highlight the default Disk 0 Unallocated Space that Microsoft usually displays automatically, and click Next (see Figure 1.)
Figure 1
– To use only part of the space, click Drive options (advanced); then click New, specify the partition size, and click Apply (See Figure 2 and Figure 3).
Figure 2
Figure 3
– To use a preexisting partition (if this disk was used previously), highlight the partition desired and click Next. Be careful, whatever partition you select for the installation will be formatted, and all data on that partition will be erased.
You can also format partitions from here; they are automatically formatted as NTFS. In addition, you can extend pre-existing partitions to increase the size of the partition but without losing any data. (For information on how to remove the 100 MB hidden partition in Windows 7/Vista, see this video.)
For more information on partitions, volumes, and formatting in Windows, see Chapter 9, “Configuring Windows” of the A+ Exam Cram 6th Edition.
