Thread: Vista's enhanced partitioning features

As with Windows XP, Vista's partitioning tools are in the Disk Management section of the Computer Management Console, and they're similarly buried deep within the Control Panel. However, there's also a quick way of getting to them: open the Start menu and right-click on Computer, then select Manage. This opens the Computer Management Console, where Disk Management can be selected. Although the options look similar to those in Windows XP, there is a big difference in that users are allowed to shrink and extend partitions without losing any data, which means partitions can be modified to reflect a user's changing computing needs.



There has also been a change in tem1inology. Every physical hard disk can contain up to four primary partitions, which when formatted perform like four separate hard disks. It's also possible to create three primary partitions, plus one extended partition. An extended pal1ition can be subdivided into so-called logical drives, each acting like a partition in its own right, and each being identified by its own drive letter in Windows, thus breaking the limitation of only four partitions - handy if you're carving up a capacious disk.

In Windows XP, when creating a new partition with the New Partition Wizard, users are asked to specifY whether partitions should be primaly or extended. They are also obliged to explicitly create at least one logical drive within an extended pal1ition before it can be used . Vista has done away with all this fuss by referring to all primary and extended partitions, as well as logical drives, as 'volumes'. When making new volumes using the Simple Volume Wizard, the first three are automatically created as primary partitions, and the fourth is created as an extended partition containing a single logical drive. Further logical drives can be added using the same Simple Volume Wizard.