Creating a Data Partition

Windows 7 (Home Premium), 64Bit

I do BackUp, and maintain a Drive Image on 2 separate Ext Drives

OBJECT: To Creat a Data Partition

Hi, I have a computer with a 1.5TB single hard drive. Presently it contains(came with) a system partition of 100MB, No drive letter, a Factory Image Partition of 11.94GB as Partition "D", and the the rest is the "C" Partition. I am reading a tutorial on partitioning a hard drive but it starts with creating a partition from unallocated space.

Tutorial:
http://www.extend-partition.com/resource/how-to-partition-a-hard-drive.html

Thus far, for safety of my factory image, I have removed the drive letter "D" from my factory image. I have read other forums where the computer operators have somehow been able to install programs/data on their Factory Image/Recovery Image partition. I can only imagine what will happen if they ever have to re-install their image.

Windows 7 comes with a partition manager. Would creating a Data Partition be as simple as right clicking my "C" Partition and selecting "Creat Partition", then renameing the new partition to "Data" and assigning it a drive letter? Even though my current drive has no unallocated space? Or, should I be looking for information on creating un-allocated space by shrinking the "C" Partition, on my hard drive?

Thanks for any help or assistance.

Ignoring any recovery partitions set up by the 'factory' most of any new PC's hard drive will be one huge partition. Not a very useful way to use a hard drive.

Discounting, for a moment, any way to manipulate partitions within windows, I would advise getting a professional Partitioning Tool, like Easeus Partition Manager. I actually have several partitioning programs but that one just comes to mind first.

With a Partitioning tool, you must first shrink the size of C: to make free space and then format that free space into whatever type of drive you need.
Even though Vista and Win-7 will NOT work on a FAT-32 formatted drive, unlike Windows XP, I find it much more usable to have my data partitions in FAT-32 mode rather than NTFS. In that mode, the data in the partition can be accessed even by a DOS boot disk. I like the freedom and accessibility that FAT-32 provides.

For a quickie backup, saving the backup image of the C: drive to a second partition is OK, but if the drive crashes, that backup will be gone.
For a more reliable backup, saving the Image File to a physical second drive, either internal or external, is much better, but again, if something like a lightning strike smokes the whole computer, that backup is gone too.
Unless, the external drive is disconnected and put in a SAFE place after doing the backup.

For maximum safety, a backup should be made to some removable media, like a DVD and then that DVD should be put in a very safe place like a fireproof vault.

In the most perfect backup scheme, you should have the ability to extract data files from a Whole Drive Backup, in case the original PC is destroyed.

For years, I've used a program called "Ghost". It was written by a company in New Zealand around 1997, before it was purchased by Symantec in 1998 and became "Norton's Ghost".
I still use the last DOS version, "Ghost 11.5" which I run from either a bootable flash drive or CD. I also have the "Ghost Explorer 11.5" which allows me to open a Ghost Image file and extract any file or folder and restore them to my hard drive. The Ghost Explorer program runs from within Windows.

When partitioning a HD for Win-7 and a data partition, I would leave at least 50 to 60 gigabytes in drive C and the rest in the data partition.

I hope all that helps, some.

Good Luck,
the Doctor