I got a 250G SeaGate SATA HDD out of a brand new PC from a friend.(he used his old drive & didn't want the new one) I've got it hooked up in my Dell Vista machine now but I need to format it & do something with the partitions. It has XP on it & has a 10gig hp recovery partition.

Should I format both first or repartition it first?

I've looked into some free partitioning software that will allow me to delete the partition & use the disk as 1 drive. I'm debating, though, on whether to just divide it into 2 more evenly sized partitions.

Any recommendations on freeware that can help me?
If I just resize them, can I do that in Vista, without additional software?

Any insight on the process in general is welcome.

Thanks

Partition Magic is as easy as it gets... If that's a hassle for you,

I can't possible recommend any freeware software to use.

But this is free, and good... Although you might find it

Even more intimidating than Partition Magic:

Ranish Partition Manager. Hard Disk Partitioning Software. Download freeware tools and source code... (http://www.ranish.com/part/)

Maybe someone else can give you advice on this question

Thanks biggsie. That one didn't specify whether it would delete partitions; only 'create, copy, & resize.'

FYI, and for anyone else, I ended up going with:

Cute Partition Manager - An advanced partition manager (http://www.cutepm.com/index.htm)

I initially found it at majorgeeks.com. This is a very small, simple program to use. From Windows, you first open the file & use it to burn a boot CD. (top button). Reboot & go to boot menu. Select the CD drive & the program opens right up with HDD1 on the screen.(F2 switches disks).

For anyone newer to this type of thing, like myself, you can trust the HDD1, HDD2, etc. designations or you can be sure based on size & usage that your looking at the right drive! Every action asks for confirmation, & the changes don't take place until you save, though, so it's pretty safe. Being very careful, it took me about 2-5 minutes, and the drive is formatting in windows now.

Thanks again, anyway, for the reply Biggsie.

If you want to dellete all the what is there before and install fresh window on it u have to partition first before u will format and do installation but is just want to partition with reformating every thing partition Magic