How To Repartition Your OS Drive In Windows XP

Using Acronis Disk Director 10.0

Be sure you have read and understand the instructions on the previous page before proceeding!

Open Acronis Disk Director and choose Manual Mode.

In the screen below, see the line that says Partition / Flags / Capacity / Free Space / Used Space? The default view does not show the Used Space section. Right-click on that line and check Used Space so you can see it.

Check the drive you wish to resize (in this case C:). Whatever you choose to resize the drive to, make sure you leave enough space for it to grow. Also, the Windows XP built-in defragmenter needs 15% of free space to work (good 3rd party defraggers don't). I left mine with about 2.8GB of free space, way more than enough in this instance.

Right-click on the drive you wish to resize (in this case C:) and choose Resize.

Make your decision about the new size of your drive and click OK.

Now you are back at the original screen. Next to the partition you have just resized is Unallocated Space. Right-click on it and choose Create Partition. I the resulting screen pick a Partition label and size for it. You should keep everything else as is. Click OK when you're ready.

You are back at the original screen. Up to now no changes have been made. Double-check and make sure everything looks like you wanted it to. When you are sure click the checkered flag in the menu to Commit changes.

Warning! If you see this screen you've really messed up. Now everything is ruined...

Just kidding!!! XP will need to be restarted. Click Reboot.

When you restart you will most likely see this next screen because you have new devices (partitions).

When XP is finished installing the new devices click Yes.

Open Acronis Disk Director again. You should see your new changes.

If you decided to burn your My Documents to a CD:

Create a new folder called My Documents in the new non-OS partition. Right-click on the My Documents folder on your desktop/start menu and choose Properties. In the resulting window click on the Move button and type in or browse to the location you want to move it to...

If you did not delete the original contents of the My Documents folder:

Answer Yes when it asks if you want to move the contents of this folder.

If you did delete the original contents of the My Documents folder:

Answer No when it asks if you want to move the contents of this folder.

You're done!