Maximizing partition size in WinXP

[hk10Mbps]

I just installed WinXP, how do I know if my partition uses all the avalible space on Harddisk without installing other software?

 

[Confused]

Right click on My Computer, and go to Manage. In the Disk Management, you will see the disk, and it will tell you the size of the partition etc.


Just remember, that hdd manufacturers quote their hard drive sizes saying that 1GB = 1,000,000 bytes, when Windows and every other OS takes it as 1024x1024 bytes, so you'll need to subtract somewhere around 4-5% (i believe) of the space your hard drive "is", to what space you get in terms of proper GBs



Confused

 

[hk10Mbps]

It seems it doesn't display unpartitioned space, it just shows the partition size. When I setup XP, it says there is unused space.

 

[Nothinman]

Generally there will be a few Megs (<10M IIRC) at the end of the disk that you can't use.

Right Click My Computer->Manage->Disk Managment (or similar, MS keeps renaming things) to see the partition layout.

 

[hk10Mbps]

Yeah when I setup WinXP it says there is 8M space isn't partitioned. But it just doesn't show the unpartition space in the Disk Managment thing.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: hk10Mbps
Yeah when I setup WinXP it says there is 8M space isn't partitioned. But it just doesn't show the unpartition space in the Disk Managment thing.

That's because that 8MB is needed if you ever want to convert to Dynamic Disks. Setup automatically reserves it and the system hides it afterwards.

 

[hk10Mbps]

What is Dynamic Disks?

 

[LittleAl]

Originally posted by: hk10Mbps
What is Dynamic Disks?

From Microsoft TechNet: "Dynamic disks provide features that basic disks do not, such as the ability to create multidisk volumes, such as striped, mirrored, and RAID-5 volumes".

Read more here:

Converting a basic disk to dynamic

 

[hk10Mbps]

Thanks