[Gwalchgwyn]

My main 125gb (i know its crap ) hard disk which i have been using for about 3-4 years now would (only recently) every now and then make a scary sounding and quite loud clicking noise - usually when it was running a few programs or a demanding program (in this case WoW). So i figured that it is probably on its last legs so i backed up all my data onto my external drive and went out to buy a new and shiny 500gb SATA drive.

After pluging it into an IDE port (which is the only type of port i have on my motherboard) i went to install windows on it, but it could only find 130gb of unpartitioned space instead of 475gb which i found weird, but i still went ahead with the installation after it had formatted a 130gb partition thinking that i could just go My Computer > Manage > Disk Management > Then select and format the left over unallocated space but when i got to that, there was only the formatted 130gb! Absolutely no unallocated space! I then restarted my comp and went into windows repair where i used the CHKDSK command in the windows repair console (which i think is the same as MS-DOS) which actually found 130gb of partitioned space and 345gb unallocated space - which windows could not seem to detect for some reason.

Anyone got any clue as to wth is going on here??

Edited by Gwalchgwyn, 09 September 2008 - 12:21 PM.

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That is the max size for a Windows XP install w/o service pack. I'm sure whether it was SP1 or 2 that increased the max size of a partition but I would install your service packs and see how that goes.

[Titan8990]

That is the max size for a Windows XP install w/o service pack. I'm sure whether it was SP1 or 2 that increased the max size of a partition but I would install your service packs and see how that goes.

[Gwalchgwyn]

But surely it would still show the unallocated space?

[Neil Jones]

But surely it would still show the unallocated space?

Not under XP with no service packs, no.

[warriorscot]

XP shows its age without service packs, remember that when it was designed 20Gb on a disk was large.

[Gwalchgwyn]

Ok, thanks alot

One more question though.

If i install the service packs now - how could i get the entire hard disk space into one partition? Is it possible? Becuase in theory i'd have to delete the exisiting partition to format it as the entire drive hence deleting windows and the service pakcs : /

[warriorscot]

I would keep the 130Gb as your OS and then format the other to use as a data partition. This helps as extra data security allowing you to reinstall the OS on the drive without losing data on the other partition. If you want you can use something like G-parted from a linux live CD to merge the partitions but it can take a long time, or you can buy something like arcronis for windows which can do the same thing.