120 Gigs instead of 320 Gigs

Jigrah

I just built a new computer and I put in a Sata hard-drive thats 320 gigs, however when I installed XP on it, XP formatted it to bieng only 120 gigs. Is that 120 gigs a limit of XP or something? If so how can I get around that ?

I imagine I will have to format the computer, is there a way I can back up that information so I dont have to reinstall XP or is that just going to have to happen?

wunderbar

wow, I haven't seen this problem in a while.....let me guess, your XP install disc is an older, original one? XP sans Service pack was limited to 127GB, SP1/1a/2 fixed that. The only problem is that you need to slipstream the service pack onto your XP install disc.

Do a google search for slipstreaming SP2 onto an XP disc, or check out last month's issue of Maximum PC, they actually had a how-to article on that exact topic.

Jigrah

Will I have to format and start over?

stigweard

That isn't exactly true. You can install with the full size using an original xp disc, provided you don't use ata compatibility mode in the bios, and you use the provided hdd drivers on a floppy.

wunderbar

Jigrah wrote: »

Will I have to format and start over?

yes. unless you can live with 2 partions on your HDD.

slipstream and build the new disc, format c, start over and pretend that it never happened :P

wunderbar

stigweard wrote: »

That isn't exactly true. You can install with the full size using an original xp disc, provided you don't use ata compatibility mode in the bios, and you use the provided hdd drivers on a floppy.

That never worked for me when I ran into that problem. it never took the HDD drivers off the floppy.

stigweard

Works fine for me. I've done it on quite a few different machines and configurations. Maybe your floppy was bad?

Ruckus

Or you could upgrade XP to SP2, burn yourself a copy of a Knoppix Bootable Linux CD, boot to the CD, and use qtparted to expand the primary partition to the full available size.

But seriously, just leave it as is and create a new partition on which to store all your music/videos/documents. It makes things a shitton easier if/when you have to format the system partition and start from scratch.

wunderbar

stigweard wrote: »

Works fine for me. I've done it on quite a few different machines and configurations. Maybe your floppy was bad?

3 floppies and 2 drives, plus testing a win98 boot floppy can't all be bad.....maybe my motherboard didn't like the drivers or something *shrugs*

slipstreaming the disc and formatting really is the most work of the bunch most likely, but in the long run, it's really nice to have the one disc with everything built into it already. I'm actually just about due for another slipstream to do all of the hotfixes/updates. the last time I installed it there were 100 updates after the install to do. having them built into the disc saves so much time when setting up the machine.

Jigrah

Ruckus wrote: »

Or you could upgrade XP to SP2, burn yourself a copy of a Knoppix Bootable Linux CD, boot to the CD, and use qtparted to expand the primary partition to the full available size.

But seriously, just leave it as is and create a new partition on which to store all your music/videos/documents. It makes things a shitton easier if/when you have to format the system partition and start from scratch.

Never played with Linux, but that looks like the best option, is qtparted a command execution?

Mr.FragBait

Jigrah wrote: »

Ruckus wrote: »

Or you could upgrade XP to SP2, burn yourself a copy of a Knoppix Bootable Linux CD, boot to the CD, and use qtparted to expand the primary partition to the full available size.

But seriously, just leave it as is and create a new partition on which to store all your music/videos/documents. It makes things a shitton easier if/when you have to format the system partition and start from scratch.

Never played with Linux, but that looks like the best option, is qtparted a command execution?

It can be, but the nice thing is that you can use a GUI version just as easy. Download and burn and .iso, boot to the linux cd, edit the partition, and boom. Windows will bitch and scan the drive, but all will be well. A live Knoppix CD or Ubuntu CD will be the easiest to use.

Jigrah

Awesome, thanks, downloading linux CDs now.

Iroh

For future reference, Norton Partition Magic also does this (and is easier), but it costs money. There may be a trial version you can use to get it done, but I'm not sure.

vonPoonBurGer

Iroh wrote: »

For future reference, Norton Partition Magic also does this (and is easier), but it costs money. There may be a trial version you can use to get it done, but I'm not sure.

Most of the trial versions for propietary partition manipulation software allow you to play with the interface and see what things would look like after the change, but they won't actually let you make the change without paying for the software. Otherwise, you'd download the trial, resize your partition the one time you ever need to do that, then uninstall the software and forget about it.

Also, if we're talking about software for $$$, Acronis Disk Director has been a lot better than Norton PM in my experience. ADD has worked flawlessly for me in several situation where PM errored out because it didn't like the SATA controller, or the RAID controller, or the type of one of the partitions on a volume, or some other damn thing. PartitionMagic was a great program, back when it was owned by PowerQuest, but like most of the software Symantec pushes these days, it's now bloated, buggy, and completely surpassed by its competitors.

wunderbar

Partition Magic was good until Norton bought them. I still have a copy of 8.0(the last before Norton), and it's pretty good.

But like most things norton touches, it went south fast.

Ruckus

I'm a corporate network tech, so I have access to all the norton stuff if I want it, but I don't. I just use a knoppix disk. You boot it, open a Terminal window, run the command "qtparted" and the Partition Editor Window appears, then you can resize, create, delete, make active, and so forth. Once you've figured out how you want it, you Commit the changes, it works for a bit, and boom, your drive has been reorganized.

A disclaimer though, apparently it can cause irrecoverable damage when you resize partitions, but its never happened to me, and I suspect that it would apply more when you're shrinking the size of an existing partition rather then expanding one.

Septus

I had the same issue, I think I may have 160g hard-drive.

What happens if I go and format the remaining space into a new partition? How do I interface with the two different partitions in Windows? Is it as simple as having another drive, beyond C:, that I could put my media files onto?

wunderbar

Septus wrote: »

I had the same issue, I think I may have 160g hard-drive.

What happens if I go and format the remaining space into a new partition? How do I interface with the two different partitions in Windows? Is it as simple as having another drive, beyond C:, that I could put my media files onto?

ya, you format it, it show's up as drive E: (or whatever), and you can copy files to it like it's a USB drive.

EDIT: bloody emoticons

Ruckus

wunderbar wrote: »

Septus wrote: »

I had the same issue, I think I may have 160g hard-drive.

What happens if I go and format the remaining space into a new partition? How do I interface with the two different partitions in Windows? Is it as simple as having another drive, beyond C:, that I could put my media files onto?

ya, you format it, it show's up as drive E: (or whatever), and you can copy files to it like it's a USB drive.

EDIT: bloody emoticons

What, I love digging through my drive.

Jigrah

A complete operating system on a CD for free, oh I am so infatuated with linux right now, thanks a bunch.