Windows XP and new Hard Drives

Psyche · #1 10-06-2004, 12:02 AM

I have Windows XP Professional and had to convert to PAT32 for it to register my 80GB HDD as 80gb, but that's all well and good.

Now I want another 80GB HDD but as I was browsing the computer management I noted that XP only recognised hard drives up to 32GB and wondered how I would get around this problem to make the computer register my second hard drive as its full 80GB!

Cheers

Psyche · #2 10-06-2004, 12:04 AM

FAT32*** :P srry

neil121183 · #3 10-06-2004, 04:38 AM

You need to format the drives in NTFS, you can have any size drive under this format.

I think FAT 32 only supports upto 32gig so thats why it's saying it's only 32.

Psyche · #4 10-06-2004, 04:40 AM

Cheers I'll try that, but my other 80GB HDD is FAT32 and it registers as its full capacity (~74.5).

neil121183 · #5 10-06-2004, 04:50 AM

Actually I've just read that FAT 32 can handle drives upto 2 terrabytes!

Here

So I'm not sure why the first drive is doing that.

What drive is it?

Psyche · #6 10-06-2004, 04:53 AM

Western-Digital 7200rpm
File System: FAT32
80GB capacity
WD800JB
Microsoft Driver v 5.1.2535.0
Doesn't say partition type or anything...

...thats about all

neil121183 · #7 10-08-2004, 08:08 AM

If you're only going to be using windows XP, then I suggest formatting both drives under NTFS to reduce problems.

The only time I would use FAT32 is with an earlier version of windows.

grajay · #8 10-08-2004, 11:50 AM

I had a problem the last time I formatted a new drive and reinstalled XP Pro - the instal failed after a horrendous amount of time with a message saying the disk was corrupt.

The same happened with another hard disk until I reduced the partition size to 10GB - anyone else had this problem, and have a solution please?

Zxian · #9 10-08-2004, 08:02 PM

Hey there,

Windows XP will reckognize hard drives that are ungodly large in size, so the problem probably doesn't lie in Windows XP. Win2K originally only dealt with drives that were less than 32 GB, until MS released Win2K-SP2 (I think...).

As for your hard drive, I too would suggest converting to NTFS. To do this, click on Start-> Run, and type in "cmd" (without quotation marks). Once the command prompt shows type in the following:

convert X: /FS:NTFS

Where X: is the letter assigned to the drive that you want to convert.

On another note, 80 GB is a lot of space. After a while this can lead to a lot of fragmentation on that drive. You might want to consider partitioning the drive in any case into smaller partitions, each specific to what's going to be on there.

For me, I've split my 40 gig drive into 3 parts, 8 gigs to Windows and programs, 14.5 gigs to music (yes, I have that much music), and 14.5 gigs to the rest of my stuff (work, videos, e-mail archives, pictures, etc). This configuration is good me since my music files don't get modified very much, and therefore don't get fragmented very much (if at all). My Windows drive only needs the occasional defrag for when Windows plays around with prefetch and temp files. This lets me defrag only about 4 gigs of stuff on C: when I need to instead of dealing with all 25 gigs of stuff that's on my hard drive in total.

If you've got a lot of data that stays stagnant (i.e. doesn't change, like music), then I'd suggest make a partition for that, and have another partition for files that get changed a lot (like files for video editing). Unless you're dealing with computers that are not Win2K or XP, then put all your drives into NTFS. It's a lot mroe stable and uses a lot less overhead than FAT32.

Hope this helps.

Psyche · #10 10-08-2004, 08:10 PM

Will the convert to NTFS erase the stuff i have on the hard drive? If so i would rather stay with FAT32 and just have the new hard drive as NTFS.

You think make like 4 partitions on the new drive of ~20GB each?

Speaking of Defragging... I tried it the other day (took 8hrs to do 13%) and then in 2 hours after that it was complete but said the following files cant be defragged, and there were heaps of those files (like around 20 or so) and I was wondering how I could de fragment them?

Zxian · #11 10-08-2004, 08:26 PM

Converting the drive will NOT delete your files, it will simply change the way that those files are stored on the hard drive (something that you don't directly need to worry about). The convert process will tell you that C: cannot be locked and that you will have to reboot your computer. When you reboot, it will run scandisk/chkdsk, and then convert the drive if no errors are found.

As for the other drive, you'll have to split it up according to your needs. You can also use each part for different types of data, i.e., one for music, one for video, one for pictures, and one for documents/general stuff. Typically, you'll size the partitions according to your needs (Video takes up more space than documents do).

If you used the Windows defragger, then you're right about it leaving your drive fragged even after a defrag run. I'd suggest going and getting another defragmenting tool. I use Raxco's PerfectDisk, and I find it just awesome. Other top sellers are O&O Defrag, by O&O Software, and Diskeeper. I wouldn't recommend Diskeeper since you get a lot more from PerfectDisk for the same $$.

There are also lots of free defragging programs out there as well. I can't remember the names of them, but do a search through this forum and you'll probably find something.

Hope this helps.

grajay · #12 10-09-2004, 12:57 AM

Thanks for the helpful reply Zxian. However my partitions are all NTFS already.

Oh well, I though I'd ask the question as it is a real puzzle. Obviously I got over the problem I had by using a 10Gb partition which in todays terms is quite small for Win XP - I got round that using Partition Magic to increase the partition size after installing the OS, but of course, any future problem with XP will cause severe grief as I can't move the partition back to 10Gb without affecting the data files in the other partitions.

Zxian · #13 10-09-2004, 03:00 AM

@grajay

Have you tried backing up all your data and doing a complete format of the entire disk? If that still doesn't work, then you might want to look into getting another hard drive (or getting this one replaced if it's under warranty).

In my book, a 10 gig Windows partition is actually quite big. I've got 8 gigs for mine, and with Windows XP-SP1a, Office 2003, Acrobat, Photoshop, MathCad, and a few other programs, I've still got 3.6 gigs free.

Also, I don't really understand what you mean by the fact that moving the main partition (Windows partition) back to 10 gigs will cause problems for the other partitions. The whole point of partitioning a hard drive is so that the data on one partition is "independent" of the data on another, from the computer's perspective that is (they're still on the same physical disk). The next time you reinstall Windows, you should be able to use the full space that C: has now for your new install.

grajay · #14 10-09-2004, 03:27 AM

Thank for getting back to me.

The problem seems to be with no matter what hard drive I use. The problem occurred with 2 brand new 120Gb drives and with my old 30Gb one. The only way I could get XP to install was to create a 10Gb partition and install it on that. This was Ok but various updates etc forced me to move the partition so I now have a 17Gb partition.

I've now got a major issue which will mean reinstalling XP again - trouble is that the partition is now too big so I shall have to reduce it to 10Gb and it would appear (to my inexperienced eye) that this will have a knock on effect on the other partitions - or am I totally wrong here?

Again thanks for the reply and help.

Zxian · #15 10-09-2004, 04:24 AM

If you have to make the initial size of the Windows partition 10 GB, this won't do anything for the other partitions. What you'll end up with is a 10GB partition, 7 GB of unallocated space (unused), and then the rest of your drive. When you've reinstalled Windows and PartitionMagic, you'll simply be able to reclaim those 7 gigs back to C drive.