220+ GB drive with partition problems

[Guest]

From a neophyte: WE bought a new computer last spring
with approx 220+ GB hard drive... that started saying
about a month ago that we were running out of memory -
and the pink and blue pie graph in properties in my
computer verified that. I couldn't figure out how we
could have filled that much memory up... but then a
friend discuvoered that the drive was partitioned... and
tried to remove the contents of the other drive..which
just disappeared - and the C drive - our main one did not
gain any more memory. It is still at or was at 14 GB.
THen another friend tried to help but ended up crashing
the computer - lost all data on both drives...had to
restore the system. Now I still have a partitioned
drive, but the c drive only has 6 GB memory. D I need
to take this into a computer place? Or can I
buy "Partition Magic' and figure this out myself?

 

[Guest]

first get new friends...someone who knows about computers. Or do you also
go to the same friends for medical advice? How about plumbing
services...same friends?

next, you are mixing up memory with hard drive space...two different pieces
of hardware...memory is RAM and disk space is the hard drive. How much RAM
do you have in the computer and what kind of hard drive do you have? Is it
one drive, or more than one drive?

Partition Magic is a very good program/utility and I use it too...

 

[Paul B T Hodges]

Before you go out and spend money on PM which you don't need, this is'nt
windows 98, go into disk manager and have a look at the disk

click START
click RUN
type DISKMGMT.MSC
hit return

You will see your disk, probably labelled disk0
It will normally be showing in the left box "Basic" Disk total size and
"Online" You say the disk is 220GB I'm a bit sceptical about that, what
size does it show in the box ?

To the right of the box containing Disk 0, will be a graphical area showing
the current partitions and their assigned drive letters. From what you say,
you should see C: 6GB, This is probably has a dark blue header indicating
that its a primary partition.
Do any other disk partitions appear there?
From your description I would guess the rest is showing as free space.

If you right click on the free space area you get a menu, choose create
partition and follow the instructions. You could create a second big one,
filling the whole free space and assign it a drive letter say E: (D: is
normally a CD ROM) or you could break it up into smaller chunks, each with
its own drive letter.

Paul




The disk will be labelled disk0 if its the only one

 

[Bob Harris]

A few things to check/fix: (1) Verify that the BIOS can handle > 137 Gig on
one disk. Even last Spring some were sold that could not do this, wothout a
BIOS upgrade. Contact the manufacture of the PC, if your documentation does
not clearly answer this questions. Note that if the BIOS can not handle >
137 Gig, sometimes you can use up to that much, but sometimes you can not
safely use any. (2) Verify that SP-1 for XP is installed and that LBA is
turned on. otherwise XP will eventually complain/des if you go beyond
137Gig.

Assuming that you do not have these problems, it is possible to delete/erase
a partition in a way that causes it to vanish from windows explorer. Most
people do not intend to do this, but it is possible.

If you see some "raw" or "unformatted" space on the disk in the XP disk
management tool, then think about initializing it as FAT32 or NTFS. Be
careful not to destroy any recovery parition. If you have a recovery CD,
then you probably do not have to worry about a recovery pariition. But,
please check your PC's documentation. If it mentions a hidden parition o
simila, do not erase/format it.

Once you go as far as possible within the XP disk management tool, then
consider Partition Magic verison 8 for things like re-sizing partitions,
combining paritions, or spliting partitions. I have used it with XP and
have been well satisifies. However, my disks are 120 Gig each, so you may
hit a siz limitation that I have not.