Will re-installing XP Pro let me re-partition my hard drive?

[Stinkfinger]

I recently put a new pc together, in which I installed a 200GB SATA hd. Anywho, when I went to install XP Pro, it only saw 130GB of unpartitioned space. Having no other recourse I just had it partition that 130GB. To my surprize, when I went into disk manager once my pc was up and running it didn't show the other 70GB of unpartitioned space. It wasn't until I installed SP2 that the other 70 showed up. So I went ahead and partitioned that space.

The problem is is that the scenario I was hoping for was to have a 50GB partition for apps and games, and the other 150 was going to be for an FTP server.

So my question to you, if I go back and reinstall XP Pro, will it see all 200GB and let me partition it the way I want from the get go? Is there another free way to merge the existing partitions and re-partition them the way I want? I'm not really worried about losing files because there's not much on my drive anyway.

 

[ITJunkie]

If you have SP2 slipstreamed into XP it may see the whole drive on install but I am not 100% sure on that.
On the other hand, why not just do the install on a 50GB partition and leave the rest alone until you have SP2 installed and use disk manager to create your 150GB partition then.

 

[Stinkfinger]

Originally posted by: ITJunkie
If you have SP2 slipstreamed into XP it may see the whole drive on install but I am not 100% sure on that.
On the other hand, why not just do the install on a 50GB partition and leave the rest alone until you have SP2 installed and use disk manager to create your 150GB partition then.

Um...er...*cough*...because I'm an idiot? That's what I'm shooting for the second time around. Will I be able to do that?

 

[bacillus]

slipstream sp2 on to your xp cd & setup will see the fully capacity of your hdd.

 

[Emultra]

Why can't the regular WindowsXP see 200GB's of hard disk space?

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Emultra
Why can't the regular WindowsXP see 200GB's of hard disk space?

Because it was written in a time when 40GB hard drives were large.

It sees up to 128GB or so; over that, you need the slipstreamed SP1 or SP2 to see the entire drive.

 

[Stinkfinger]

Besides slipstreaming, if I were just to go back and re-install XP and do what ITJunkie suggests, will that work?

 

[ITJunkie]

Yes...just install SP2 before you open Disk manager to create the 150GB partition.

 

[TGS]

Couldn't you just install the SATA drive as a single RAID device? That should get around the IDE issue of 137GB limit pre-Win2K SP 4/XP SP 1-2(?)

Just do a 15-20 OS partition, 40-50 Games, and (After SP2)Whatever is left. It's really 180ish usable. As 200GB is marked as 1000MBs/GB not 1024MBs/GB.

Marketting at it's finest.

Edit: Was thinking about it, and I don't believe that windows will allow you to change your OS partition size. As the only way within windows is through dynamic disks, which IIRC cannot be done on the OS partition. Everything else you can change later if you convert to dynamic disks.

 

[casper114]

Good answer!

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: Stinkfinger
Besides slipstreaming, if I were just to go back and re-install XP and do what ITJunkie suggests, will that work?

Yep. Just make a 10Gb (or so) partition* for Windows within Setup (after removing all other partitions), then once you're in Windows, install SP2 and create the larger partition.

* 10Gb works well for me- I don't install programs on C: