Losing data when I partion disk?

[Brandon Cirella]

I have 2 hard drives. I want to partion the second hard drive. It already has about 4 gigs of data from Windows on it. When I partion the disk, will any of my hard drives be wiped? Could I possible lose data?

Hi,

it is possible to resize partitions, which already have data stored on
them, but it is a bit risky. Since you are talking about resizing a
windows partition i suppose you are about to install fedora, but
currently only have windows running. I would therefore recommend
Partition Magic as a very powerful Windows program, which is capable
of the aforementioned partioning feature.

I would also recommend backing up your data (create an image of the
partition), just in case.

Do a google search, to find aout more about Partition Magic.

Cheers,
/dev/loop

On Sun, 31 Oct 2004 09:02:15 -0500, Brandon  wrote:
> I have 2 hard drives. I want to partion the second hard drive. It already
> has about 4 gigs of data from Windows on it. When I partion the disk, will
> any of my hard drives be wiped? Could I possible lose data?  
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[Joel]

> ...
> I would also recommend backing up your data (create an image of the
> partition), just in case.

I've used Partition Magic with mixed results. Last time I used it, I
noted that in the documentation it says that you should avoid changing
partitions too often. Unfortunately, that was not the answer I wanted at
the time.

(So I had fun booting on a floppy and backing up the important stuff to
floppy by hand, and I was glad that machine only had two floppies with
of important stuff on it.)

Now, I have to admit, I was trying for triple boot at the time, and had
already moved the MSW partitions about five or six times in unsuccessful
placement strategies before PM lost my MSW boot block. ;-P
> Do a google search, to find aout more about Partition Magic.
> ...
> > I have 2 hard drives. I want to partion the second hard drive. It already
> > has about 4 gigs of data from Windows on it. When I partion the disk, will
> > any of my hard drives be wiped? Could I possible lose data?

Why do I read that question and feel as if I am going into oxygen
starvation?

Partition your disk and ye shall lose data.

(Partitioning re-writes the information that the operating system uses
to keep track of your data. So, no, it is not just "possible", the
probability is better than 99% that you want be able to find the data on
your disk after you partition it, unless you _really_ know what you are
doing, _and_ enjoy reading hex dumps from special device files.)

Back your data up before you start to play with your partitions, at any
rate.