[Rikterscale]

I would like to put a new XP Pro on a new 360 GB internal HD. I remember there being some problem with a HD being too big and installing XP, but cant remember what it is.

Can someone remind me and help me out please?

Thanks.

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To my knowledge I didn't know there was an issue like that. I installed Windows XP Pro on my 320 GB HD just fine. Are you sure its a concern and have you trie installing it yet?

[3quilibrium]

To my knowledge I didn't know there was an issue like that. I installed Windows XP Pro on my 320 GB HD just fine. Are you sure its a concern and have you trie installing it yet?

[Ponyroper]

There was a problem with XP SP1 which I personally ran into regarding the OS only being able to format HDD's up to 137GB in size. XP SP2 addressed that issue and if you have that version or newer you should not have any trouble using bigger hard drives. My old XP Pro version could not be installed on a hard drive larger than 137GB unless the drive was first partitioned into two drives with the biggest one smaller than 137GB. That was fine until I tried to do a Recovery Install on the drive and found I could not do that because of the size limitation. My solution was to make a slipstream installation disk with SP2 on it and that took care of my problem doing the Recovery Install. Now I don't have to worry about the size of the HDD when I install a new drive or do a Recovery Install. Hope that answers your question.

Ponyroper

[Rikterscale]

Yes that answers my question and I thank you for it.

The OS Im installing is XP Pro with SP2, so we should be cool.

Thanks again.

[Neil Jones]

Terabyte drives may have issues on some boards but that's not a Windows issue. Theoretically XP with SP1 or later should be able to see drives up to 144Petabytes, which is 144 million Gigabytes.

[Jonesey]

FWIW I think you're better off installing your Operating System on a smaller partition on the same drive - that way, you can always reformat the partition and reinstall your OS without disturbing any of your programs/data.

I'd rather reformat a 10 gig drive than a 500 gig one.

[dsenette]

FWIW I think you're better off installing your Operating System on a smaller partition on the same drive - that way, you can always reformat the partition and reinstall your OS without disturbing any of your programs/data.

I'd rather reformat a 10 gig drive than a 500 gig one.

agreed! this is common best practice...

[Ponyroper]

I agree that splitting the drive might be a good idea however I will give you one reason why I can't do that. I use XXClone to make an image clone of my primary 200GB drive on my 200GB slave drive and XXClone default names the clone drive D:. I ran into a major problem when my primary drive crashed and I tried to boot from the XXCloned drive because I already had a D: drive as the second partition on the primary drive so I couldn't boot with XXClone from the slave D: drive. It kept looking for the backup files on the D: drive on the primary drive instead of the D: drive on the slave drive. I don't know if other cloning software works the same way but if it does making two partitions on the primary drive could cause the same problem I ran into. I was able to eventually boot from my cloned drive by disconnecting the primary drive and just running the slave drive but before I can clone the original primary drive again I need to figure out how to delete the second partition now labeled D:. If anyone knows how I can delete the second partition without hosing up the C: partition I would like to know how to do it.

[The Skeptic]

If I understand correctly (which I may not) then your problem is quite simple. Your cloned disk is running well now as a primary disk and you have another 200 gig disk with two partitions and a damaged operating system. Why not leave the cloned disk running as primary and connect the damaged disk as slave? If you choose to do so you can delete the second partition (marked D) and reformat the entire disk. Just swap disks. Deleting a partition and reformatting can be done in Disk Management (control panel > administrative tools > computer management > disk management).

As for creating a system partition and data partition, that's a good advice. However, I never do that without leaving 40-50 gig for the system partition. I have seen lots of computers where system partition was sized to 10-15 gig and very quickly the partition ran out of space. When this happens the computer shows all the symptoms of an overloaded disk (slow down, crashes, excessive fragmentation etc.) eventhough there is a lot of free space on other partitions.

[Ponyroper]

The reason I can't do what you suggest is because I have installed additional software on the primary drive and in order to have a backup of that software and those new files I need to clone the original primary drive again. I did a recovery install of Windows and the primary drive is now back to 100% however when I do the next backup I do not want the second partition to be backed up. That is why I want to delete it before I do the backup. There is nothing on the second partition that I need to save so it can be safely deleted if I knew how. Also I deleted the cloned disk right before the primary drive crashed so I no longer have a backup of the primary drive. I need to do that backup ASAP.

[The Skeptic]

A free tool that can accomplish the gob is GParted. Use the link in my list below and download the latest .iso file. Burn it to a disk to create a bootable CD (please note that burning .iso files is different to burning other files. You can use the link below to download BurnCDCC. It's an excellent, most easy to use .iso files burner).

Boot the computer with GParted clicking Enter when given options to choose parameters. The program will open and show the partitions of your drive. It will show one NTFS partition the size of your C partition and then it will show an Extended partition which equals in size to your D partition. Then you will see another NTFS partition which also equals D partition.

Mark D (NTFS) and delete it. Then mark C and choose to resize it to all over the extended volume. At the end you will have one NTFS partition that covers all available space except for some 8 MB of unallocated space.

To avoid confusion please disconnect, for the duration of the process, any other hard drive that may be connected.

[Ponyroper]

Thanks for the help.