New Windows XP Home Install...new partition question

[rivethead]

I recently installed Windows XP Home on a 160GB hard drive. During the Windows installation, I created four partitions:

1 10GB NTFS partition for the OS and apps
1 20GB NTFS partition for games
1 40GB NTFS partition for Audio,Video, and other files
1 10GB NTFS partition for another OS (maybe the beta of Windows XP64)
1 4 GB FAT32 partition for DOS apps if necessary

That totals 84GBs. I realized I had left a LOT of unpartitioned space after the installation so I went into Computer Management>Storage>Disk Management and created another partition and formated it NTFS. But the maximum size it let me create was 65GB.

So now disk management is showing one drive (that's all I have) with 149.04GB.

Here's my primary question: Is there a way to retrieve, format, and use that missing 10GB of space (I know 8MB is automatically set aside)?

I think my problem is that Windows only lets you set up 5 logical drives (in addition to the primary) and Windows must limit the size of these logical drives to 65GB. Does that sound correct?

So what I probably need to do is delete one of the smaller partitions and then re-create it as a larger size (for example, delete the 10GB other OS partition and re-create it as a 20GB partition).

Will that work? I'd like comments before I try this. This is a brand new install and I have nothing on these partitions.

Thanks!

 

[CaptnKirk]

You're going to find out oh too soon that the 10GB for the OpSys is too small.
You will want either 20GB or more - up to 25GB for the Operating System.

The difference is in the way computers count the numbers - you're used to thinking
in 10's 100's 1,000's, etc. . .

Computers count by 1024 - so if you multiply the 149.04 X 1024 = you get the size ot the total,
less what the partitioning takes for itself.

 

[rivethead]

I followed (perhaps foolishly?) the "Radified Partitioning Strategies for Creating Hard Drive Partitions" http://partition.radified.com/partitioning_4.htm

I don't have any problems with making a larger partition for the OS......do you have any suggestions on the easiest route to do this, or do I need to start over and reinstall windows?

Thanks!

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

I normally leave 15GB for OS. Install normal programs (like WMP, web browser, etc) on that.

Everything else elsewhere. If I were you, I'd do it this way.

160 drive:

20GB OS\programs
10GB extra OS (if you actually decide to)
80GB Audio\Visual
40GB games

If it were my drive though, I'd do this.

160GB drive:

15GB OS\programs
135GB everything else.

 

[rivethead]

Thanks for the advice.

Currently, I have XP2 Home SP2, some drivers, and AV software installed on my system drive. Total space used is 4GB with 6GB still free.

What is going to use up all that space in the future that I need a 15-20GB system drive?

I just want to be convinced before I restart this whole installation process.

And I'd love to hear others' opinions on this.

Thanks!