Partitioning Harddrive

Hello,

I need to reformat and reinstall windows on one of my computers as wanted to partition the hard disk but when reading Microsoft's tutorial on disk partitioning it says:

"Prepare the hard disk according to the manufacturer's instructions
If you are using a SATA hard disk, skip this step and go to the "Determine the type of file system that you want to use" section. If you are using an IDE hard disk, set the jumpers and the cabling according to the role of the hard disk (for example, master or subordinate) and make any required BIOS (or CMOS) changes. To set the jumpers and cabling, and make any required BIOS or CMOS changes, see the documentation that was included with your hard disk and motherboard, or contact the manufacturers."

I'm unsure whether my hard disk is SATA or IDE. How would I find this out?

Many thanks,
Sam

Hi Here's a guide that shows what to look for to correctly identify your hard drive
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/page-170307_10_0.html
Regards
paws

OK this is a simple task for the most part, but explaining it may make it sound more complex than it is, first you need to identify the drive type and make, safest way to do this is probably to click on Start - Control Panel - System, once loaded click the Hardware tab followed by Device Manager, give it a sec to load and you will see a list of your hardware, expand the section for Disk Drives and note down the info from there. A simple search of the info from there will tell you the make and model of the drive from which you will get the answer of ide or Sata, and with the make you can download the utility from that maker which allows you to perform maintenance and tests on the drive, you can use this to format and partition the drive to what you want, but I would suggest noting how big the partition you want to make is in formats other than gig, in my experience they wont list them in gig's, they will use MB's or something (sorry been a long time since I last looked at this), if you have any confusion feel free to post back, if the code is something you can't make out then post it here and people can look it up for you and point you to the utility you will need, but if you have a window on the side of the case have a look at the cable connecting to the hard drive, if it is a big wide ribbon it is ide, if it is a really thin with a tiny connector on the end it is Sata, don't confuse a round ide cable for Sata though, although round it will still have large plugs on the ends, hope this gets you started at least. *edit Sorry had to get the door, there was no reply when I started lol.