Hassles with partitions

[vince56]

Ok, so I bought a 160 GB hard drive about a month ago. When XP formatted it, it only registered at about 127 GB. I felt gipped, but oh well, I needed to get it going at the time and figured I'd deal with it later. I figured it was just a drive with a lot of bad sectors on it or something.

Anyway, I'm fumbling around in the computer tonight and I see a little option called disk management. Here I see that I have about 20 GB of unformatted hard drive. OK, so...

1.) Why didn't Windows automatically format the entire 160 GB drive?

2.) Is there any way to join this partition to my existing C: drive?

Any help would be hot. I'm thinking of purchasing Partition Magic, but since it's only one thing I want to do, I'd like to know if any of you guys know of some freeware/shareware program that can merge partitions. Thanks.

 

[Ryanwb]

I'm not certified with XP, but I believe the maximum partition size in NTFS is 2 terrebytes which is 2000 Gigs so you should have been able to see the entire drive. Also by default Windows reserves 12.5% of your total drive space to MFT (master file table...I think) so 12.5% of 160 gigs = ~ 20 gigs

Unfortunately you cannot add onto your primary partition without starting out fresh.... I always create two partitions anyway a C: and D:

The reason being I reinstall windows probably once a year and any files I save on c: are wipped out, but my files on d: remain. Of course there can't be any registry dependent programs on there but like MP3's and JPEGs and stuff work great.

 

[Ryanwb]

OH yeah, I have only used Partition magic to slice up the partition, not to readd to it, so I've have no idea if it has that capability

 

[bratwurst]

I have used partition magic to merge partitions before.

You can't do it on a server though, or with a machine running raid. But that doesn't apply here so you should be good.

I think partition magic is pretty expensive though just to merge drives once.

As far as 127 megs is concerned, are you running XP Sp1? If you are, you probably need to edit a file in the registry to allow windows to see the full size of the drive. Further, if you have a older motherboard you may need to update your bios as well.

 

[vince56]

I think partition magic is pretty expensive though just to merge drives once.

As far as 127 megs is concerned, are you running XP Sp1? If you are, you probably need to edit a file in the registry to allow windows to see the full size of the drive. Further, if you have a older motherboard you may need to update your bios as well.

Motherboard is a MSI K8T NEO-FSR, top of the line board for socket 754 AMDs. As for what Ryan said about the 12.5% win xp reserves, I think that's the additional 10 megs or so that I'm missing (128 Gb + 21 Gb = 150 roughly, actual drive is 160 gb).

As for the registry, nah windows can see the full size of the drive, I just don't understand why windows didn't partition the whole damn thing when I formatted the drive and installed XP. Strange.

 

[bratwurst]

Windows has a flaw that it can't use higher than 127 gigs if you don't have SP1 installed, or if you are missing that line in the registry I am pretty sure.

Do a quick google groups search on 127 gigs, you will find it.

 

[arthurracoon]

Is there any free partitioning software?

I'm reformating my entire computer, and starting fresh, and I need to partition my hard drive.

 

[bratwurst]

The OS you are going to install will have a partition management session as part of the setup.

What are you trying to install, and are you going to do any sort of RAID or are you using a simple one physical drive install?

 

[arthurracoon]

The OS you are going to install will have a partition management session as part of the setup.

What are you trying to install, and are you going to do any sort of RAID or are you using a simple one physical drive install?

Well, I've completely reformatted my hard drive, deleted all my previeous partitions, and now I'm installing XP.

I was using a bood disk, and running fdisk from some sites, but that doesnt make NTFS partitions - it only uses FAT32.

When I install XP, it doesnt give me an opportunity to partition the hard drive.

Or do I have to make FAT32 partitions, and XP will convert all the partitions to NTFS (not just the partition I'm installing XP onto).

 

[bratwurst]

XP can reformat partitions from FAT to NTFS, but you should be getting a part in the install that asks you to choose/make a partition to install to.

 

[arthurracoon]

I found it!!!

thanks!