Cant create partition

My friend has a dell inspiron 1525. As the dell guys didnt partition the hdd; we had to do it ourselves.
So i had to shrink the volume. And now i had a 66 gb volume which is grey in color and the label says - unallocated.
Now i right clicked on it and tried to format it as ntfs and then a error came saying "cannot create partition as you have max. Number of partitions ". Now he can not even utilise those 66gbs ..help !! Note : he has only 3 partitions. C: , recovery (d

, and the unallocated one which isnt showing up !!

G

Did you try to create it as a logical partition in an extended partition? You can't have more than one primary (bootable) partition if I'm not mistaken.

G

You can create only 3 primary partitions.Best way to partition hard drive is to keep C: primary and use remaining space as extended partition for logical drives.I think you have to format entire hard drive.You can also use Super Fdisk bootable (In Jan 2009) DVD or download image file from here->*super-fdisk.qarchive.org/

Why go through all this trouble when its 'DELL' ?? They are famous for their 24 hrs customer service so why don't you guys call them up and they will be there to fix it up and since they forgot to partition the HDD they will be complied to do it.

Still if you guys want to do it yourself then i would suggest you to download a software called 'Boot NG' which is very small in size and very efficient as well. You can even copy it in a floppy and boot through it.

Goodluck.

A

I have a HP Pavilion dv5 laptop which came with a 250 gb hard disk seperated into two partition a recovery of 10 gb and another of 225 GB.

I was able to successfully format it using the shrink volume utility provided with Windows Vista moreover I was I did the same procedure with the partitioned hard disk again and again and it was successfully partitioned. If you are not able to format it using Vista utility try inserting the Windows XP cd(if you have) and make partition using the DOS based partitioning utility present in the CD(that one which you see in blue screen when you try to install XP in a particular drive) from that prompt partition the unpartitioned space using NTFS and your problem is solved but remember after you partition the hard disk please remove the CD to stop installing XP over the newly created empty partition.

@Ecstasy

Dell charges to partition the HDD. They will partition it only if u select it in ur package......

^^lol, whats a lulzers to charge for partitioning !

Akshay said:
@Ecstasy

Dell charges to partition the HDD. They will partition it only if u select it in ur package......

Like the thread starter said they forgot to partition the HDD so technically speaking its their mistake.

P.S- I would have screwed their happiness if they would have done this to me.

Let me clear some clouds of confusion.
@ecstacy :
Never did I say that the dell guys forgot to partition the hdd. It isnt their fault.
@others
How do i know if the partition I created is an extended partition or not ??
And will system restore work for my cause ??

Dont think system restore will help. Use software like Partition Magic and extend an existing partition to include the unallocated portion. Later you can convert it to an extended partition using the same software.

thanks @aswin1