Removable hard drive

I have a hard drive which is removable (hot-swappable in a laptop's bay). The drive has unallocated free space at the beginning, probably because it was previously a primary drive and I don't think it has been formatted since. It was successfully partitioned once with version 10, latest build, but the unallocated space remains. I would like one more partition (so as to have three).

There is no data of consequence on the drive, and I can copy it to the primary drive in any case. The unallocated space seems a waste. Would it be advisable to reformat the drive, and if so what procedure should I follow?

 

Hello Peter,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Partition and Disk Managing Software.

As far as I understand, you are going to create a new partition using the unallocated space on your hard drive. In this case it is not necessary to reformat the drive. You are able to create a new partition.

We recommend you to read Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 User's Guide. It contains all the necessary information.

Thank you.
--
Kirill Omelchenko

 

The user's guide should come first, not last. I admit, it didn't.

My problem was identical to that in another thread, 'Unallocated Space on Drive', now on p.3. The unallocated space bugged me until I realized that the size is a drop in the bucket, and from the thread referred to, I gather it is necessary. I now have two unallocated spaces, both exactly the same size, one at the beginning and one at the end.

The only reason for formatting was to be sure the drive was clean, and that proved easy, as did several other things, because I have XP Pro. (Right click on My Computer, left click on Manage, left click on Disk Management.) The one oddity is that when I used Disk Director Suite to partition, it inserted the new partition to a position apparently before the existing partition and gave it a drive letter after that partition. I juggled letters to put them in sequence, which may have been a bad idea. The same happened with the third partition.

 

Hello Peter,

Could you please describe your step-by-step actions which you took while creating new partitions on that hard drive using Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0?

Please be aware that you can select where the newly created partition will be located on your hard drive if you have sevral separated parts of unallocated space (Just right-click on the unallocated space and choose the "Create new partition" option).

It does not matter what the sequence of drive letters on your hard drive is. It does not affect the hard drive's and operating system's functioning in any way if the drive letter of the partition where the operating system is installed was not changed.

Thank you.
--
Kirill Omelchenko