Hack 43 Create a New Partition with PartitionMagic 
Create new partitions from free or existing
partition space with PartitionMagic.
PartitionMagic is one
of the most popular tools for working with disk partitions under
Windows. It lets you create, delete, resize, merge, or prepare
partitions for different operating systems. Working on a disk drive
with a couple of existing partitions is one of the things
PartitionMagic is great for because its wizards show you the state of
existing partitions, let you borrow space from an existing partition
(actually shrinking it to make room) for a new partition, and provide
three levels of safeguards to help protect your existing data before
any changes are made to your disk.
In this hack, I take you through making a new partition in free space
on an existing drive. Your first step is to acquire a copy of
PartitionMagic and install it on your PC. You can buy and download a
copy online from Symantec's web site (http://www.symantec.com). Once installed,
PartitionMagic is at your service to help you perform many
disk-related tasks. To create a new partition, follow these steps:
From the PartitionMagic menu select "Create a new
partition" (Figure 5-8).
 Select where you want the new partition to be created (Figure 5-9). This is where the value of a tool like
PartitionMagic becomes impressive; the program can actually insert a
partition before, after, or between two others. Inserting a partition
causes two operations to happen: at least one of the partitions is
moved and then the new partition is created. The typical choice is to
create the new partition after any existing partitions.
 If the partition you want to create will need more space than you
have free to use, you can take space from another partition, as shown
in Figure 5-10. In this case, there is ample free
space (17 GB) to make a third partition and not have to take space
away from another. If space is borrowed from another partition, then
the existing partition is resized, optionally moved, and the new
partition is created.
 Next select the size and type for the new partition, as shown in
Figure 5-11
 The default settings, plus typing in a label for the new partition, are all that is necessary to get to the next step. If the drive letter seems out of sequence at this point, there are tools to change drive letters to suit your preferences or sense of logical order.
Review the details of the drive partitions before and after the
changes, as shown in Figure 5-12. Click Back to make
any changes and Next to queue up their execution.
 Back at the main screen, you will see that the Apply button is
available. Selecting it tells PartitionMagic to make the changes
you've indicated. In a few minutes the process will
be complete and you will have a new partition made to order, as you
can see in Figure 5-13.
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