Partition to recover drive space?

Niffoni · Post by **Niffoni** » December 28, 2005, 1:16 am

Well, sadly my copy of Windows XP is old and crappy, so when it formatted my drive, it only picked up on half of my 250gig drive when i got my new machine.

It's not like i desperately need the space, but I really don't want to wipe and start over. I heard you can use partition programs to recover the unused space into a new partition, which is more than good enough for me. Problem is, I don't know anything about how to do it. Any ideas?

Fash · Post by **Fash** » December 28, 2005, 2:14 am

you should go to the manufacturers website and click support, find the model, and download their program for fixing the partition table and creating partitions from the extra space.

not enough info to give you a more specific answer.

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » December 28, 2005, 1:04 pm

well the problem is Windows XP install disks that are pre-SP1 do not support drives over something like 140GB.

Partition Magic will fix it for you very easily. It is a nice product, but you have to pay for it. It doesnt create a new partition (unless you want it to), it simply resizes your current one, and formats the remaining drive space.

dont do any of the changes to your partition table until you have downloaded the Windows updates and gotten your Service Packs installed.

Deward · Post by **Deward** » December 28, 2005, 3:16 pm

This isn't always an XP problem. Sometimes it is the manufacturer of the hard drive. I recently added a 160GB Seagate hard drive to my machine. I had to download a utility from them that booted up the machine and set the partition to full hard drive size. XP had no problems seeing it as it should have then.

miir · Post by **miir** » December 28, 2005, 5:40 pm

Partition Magic will fix it for you very easily. It is a nice product, but you have to pay for it. It doesnt create a new partition (unless you want it to), it simply resizes your current one, and formats the remaining drive space.

Partition Magic is definately worth buying.

Niffoni · Post by **Niffoni** » December 28, 2005, 6:01 pm

I'm sure it's XP, not the drive.

Alright, well, I'll try to RTFM on partition magic, and then letcha know how it goes =)

Zaelath · Post by **Zaelath** » December 28, 2005, 6:15 pm

Niffoni wrote:I'm sure it's XP, not the drive.

Alright, well, I'll try to RTFM on partition magic, and then letcha know how it goes =)

If it's just XP, then you should be able to see the whole drive in "drive management" once it's got SP2 on.