It MUST be understood that a major repartitioning of your hard drive will wipe out every scrap of information on the drive, and that means any partition on the drive.  If you have a C and D drive in the My Computer window, chances are it’s only one physical hard drive, but partitioned into two "drives", as Windows calls them.

In this case, a major repartitioning will wipe out BOTH drives, C and D.

Even if you have a C, D, E and F drive in the My Computer window, it could still just be one physical hard drive, just broken into four partitions.  Again, EVERYTHING will be lost on all four drives if you repartition everything.

Now, you can repartition parts of a hard drive and not wipe everything out, that’s true, but it’s not for the weak of heart.  For example, if you had your hard drive broken into four partitions, C, D, E and F, you could combine D E and F into one large partition, and C would never be touched.  But you really have to pay attention and do it right the first time around.  One slip and it’s "Good-bye, everything."

If you’re unsure as to how many drives and partitions you have, open Control Panel, Administrative Tools, ‘Computer Management’, then click on ‘Disk Management’.  You’ll see the drives in the lower-right window and any partitions contained therein.

If it’s a new drive, you’ll see one big block for the partition.  Right-click on it and ‘Make partition’.  Divide things up as you like.  There’s a four-partition limit when using the ‘primary’ function, so if you want more than four partitions, make the fourth one an ‘extended’ device, then divide that into however many partitions you like.

If the drive is already full of partitions and you want to change the size or eliminate some, right-click and ‘Delete partition’.  Again, everything on that particular partition will be history, so make sure things are backed up.

If you’re dealing with the C Drive, obviously the partition can’t be deleted while Windows is up so the usual routine is to use the Windows Install disc.  Just remember that if you wipe out the C partition to re-size it, it’s going to wipe out every other partition on the drive.