How Do I Partition an External HD?

koolx

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I got an external hard drive with a backup image. I want to make a partition on it without formatting it and without erasing this backup image. How can I do this?
 
Disk Management is Window's built-in tool (just search "Disk Management" to launch it), I don't think it'll play nice for what you're trying to do though. If you right click on the hdd in question it'll have a "Shrink volume" option enabled if it's possible, otherwise you'll have to use Gparted or Partition Wizard
 
+1 to GParted.

Makes it way easy to manage partitions on disks. Yes it's an "extra" utility, but it's not like it costs money - it's a free LiveCD.
 
I went to the Gparted website and found that Gparted is 300MB and is a liveCD. Why is this such s big file? And why isn't this an easy to install .exe file?

It's not an EXE because it's a Linux-based. It's an application that is run within a small, bootable, Linux environment. That's the reason it's also 300mb, because it has the Linux kernel + common hardware drivers, as well as the GParted application.

You can download the ISO and either: burn it to a CD, or create a bootable flash drive with something like UNetBootin.
 
If you *really* don't want to do that, try Partition Wizard (I linked to it above). Other users have reported success using that tool, GParted is just the sure-fire way to get it done.
 
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