250GB drive reduced to 137GB

I have just installed a new 250GB, 7200 rpm Maxtor drive. I have put WinXP Pro on it. I have installed the big drive support program from Maxtor and after that didn't work I installed Intels application accelerator. Neither of these recommended solutions have changed the fact that the drive is still not recognized as having 250GB. I would love any suggestions, cuz I don't want to have to re-reinstall Windows.

 

Sorry, should have said. I have already installed all of the recommended windows updates (i.e. SP2)

 

One solution is, since you have installed the Big Drive Support from Maxtor, you should now be able to enlarge the drive partition by using Partition Magic and not lose any data.

 

BTW, if you don't have access to a copy of Partition Magic you can just use the XP Administrative Tools > Computer managment > Disk management utility in Control Panel to create an additional partition from the unallocated space.

It should be showing unallocated space. If it shows no unallocated space, you may have a BIOS limitation that needs some attention.

 

I don't have a copy of Partition Magic, so the advice about the Disk Management Utility was welcome. It's not exactly what I wanted, but it was certainly easier to make a second partition than anything else I could think of. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

I have just one question.

Why would you want a 250GB Harddrive all in one partition ? That does not and never has made any sense to me.

Unless you have some other place to store backups and the OS goes bonkers you stand a chance of LOSING EVERYTHING

I believe it is much better to keep the C: drive just large enough to hold the OS and associated things and keep everything else on at lest 1 if not 2 partitions.

BillyBob

 

So, is it possible to set up partitions on the C: drive so that any free space I have could be assigned to a partition that's separate from the OS.

I have about 20GB left out of 80GB and I'm trying to figure out if, or how, I can repartition the disk ... preferably into 3 partitions.

I hope that made sense

 

Speaking of not making sense. ( or I am reading wrong ) The post title says 137 out of 250 is recognized. That equals 113 remaing. Now you say that you have 20gig out of 80gig. Where did the other 33gig go ?

BillyBob

 

No, you can't re-partition the free space on your boot partition. You can only partition "Unallocated" space on a physical drive. You can use a third party software to reduce the size of the boot partition and thereby create unallocated space but in your case I wouldn't necommend it.

I recommend that you continue to use this drive "as is" since XP works very well with much larger partitions than you have. Cutting it into pieces serves no useful purpose and in fact will reduce the efficiency.

If it's all working well now, I suggest that the best thing to do is leave it alone. If you are concerned about protecting your data from a system crash, get a good reliable disk imaging software to create a weekly backup so you can have a degree of security against any crash. I recommend keeping that backup disk image on a separate physical hard drive or other media since a hardware failure when running a single drive will hose the backup files as well as the system, even though they reside on a separate partition. Be sure you get an image creation software that can restore from a boot floppy or cd.

 

Not the same person BillyBob. The thread got hi-jacked.

 

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That my friend I find not to be true. And I also disagree. I have XP Pro SP2 on an 8gig partition with almost 3gig free on an 80gig drive. BTW. it is the same HD and partition that ORIGINALLY had Win98 then 98SE and now XP Pro on it. LUCKLY I have not had to do a format in years. Other than a new HD that is.

It is partitioned this way beacuse EVERYTHING POSSIBLE is on other partitions. I dispise having to download stuff the 2nd time. I also do not like losing any/all data files created by any program.

And at least a 2nd partiton is an excellent place to store backups.

All 3rd party software/programs and other downloads are on partitions D: thru H:

The larger the partiton and the more on same, the more CAN BE LOST if a format should be required.

BillyBob