WinXP & new 40GB - partitioning problem

[Slickone]

After booting from the CD, I'm trying to partition a new IBM 120GXP 40GB (sticker says 41.1 GB).
Details:

On the partitioning screen, it showed up as 39,261GB
I created the first partition.

It said min 8MB, max 39253MB.

I made it 29,000MB.

It showed:
C:\partition 1 29,000MB
unpartitioned space 10,260MB

I created a partition in the unpartititoned space.

It said min 8MB, max 10,252MB.

I made it 10,252MB.

Now it shows:
C:\partition 1 29,000MB
D:\partition 2 10,252MB
Unpartitioned space 8MB

What is this 8MB? I don't want a third partition. I really don't even want two, but decided it's best to keep cluster size down a little (32KB instead of 64).

Also the first time I created the 2nd partition, it came up as F). Why? I just deleted it and re-partitioned it and it changed to D.

 

[Ark]

Win XP like Win2000 keeps 8MB spare for future boot manager, in case you will need one.
Just ingroe 8MB - it's nothing compare to 40GB

 

[cleverhandle]

<< unpartitioned space 10,260MB
...
What is this 8MB? I don't want a third partition. >>



Um... UNpartitioned space means that it's not a partition, just free space on the drive. It won't show up under an OS. Don't know about the lettering issue.

 

[RolyL]

Win 2000 / XP can use Dynamic Disks. If you want the 8 Mb back, use the Computer Management MMC and convert the drive to a Dynamic Disk. The MBR will be whupped off and a replacement stuffed elsewhere on the drive. The 8 Mb will become available and a partition can be set up there. If you format it as FAT, a couple of Mb of storage space will become available. Wow. Dynamic Disks are pretty cool though.

 

[odog]

if you want to rename your drive letters..... go to the run prompt and type diskmgmt.msc, then rename all the drives you want to temp letters(x,y,z etc etc etc) then start shufffling them around...(make sure all your cd drives have cd's in them as they need to have data in them to show up in diskmgmt)

 

[Slickone]

WinXP automatically formatted then installed XP on the C partition. So now how do I format my other partition? Do you use the Recovery Console, or can it be safely done in Windows?

 

[cleverhandle]

If the drive shows up in Explorer, you can just format from there. Otherwise, you can select the partition in the disk management tool and choose format from the action menu. You shouldn't need to do anything outside of Windows, though, as long as it's already installed on C:.