80 GB Hard Drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter William B. Lurie
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William B. Lurie

I have a new 80 GB drive that I am about to install
Windows XP Home Edition in. Is there a link that
will lead me to where the problems are discussed, such as
having a partition greater than 32 GB, and whether those
problems apply also to XP-Pro Edition.......? I can install
either one....... Also, if I have to partition it, will that
happen during XP Setup, or do I do it first somehow,
or later, or what?

Thank you.

William B. Lurie
 
In said:
I have a new 80 GB drive that I am about to install
Windows XP Home Edition in. Is there a link that
will lead me to where the problems are discussed, such as
having a partition greater than 32 GB,
Click to expand...


"The" problems? There are no problems, but there's one related
issue you may want to consider.

Windows XP will not let you *create* a FAT32 partition larger
than 32GB, although it will happily use one if it's created
externally. If you want one you need to create it before starting
the XP installation, by using FDISK from an older Windows
version.

However, I recommend using NTFS instead of FAT32, and there are
no issues there at all.

and whether those
problems apply also to XP-Pro Edition.
Click to expand...


XP Professional and Home are identical in this regard.

I can install
either one....... Also, if I have to partition it, will that
happen during XP Setup,
Click to expand...


You will be prompted to create whatever partition structure you
want--NTFS or FAT32, a single partition or multiple partitions.
 
Thank you, Ken. I apologize for the unjudicious use of the
word 'problems'. I should have qualified it with 'potential'.
Bill Lurie
 
In said:
Thank you, Ken. I apologize for the unjudicious use of the
word 'problems'. I should have qualified it with 'potential'.
Click to expand...


You're welcome, and that's OK--I did understand what you meant.
 
William said:
I have a new 80 GB drive that I am about to install
Windows XP Home Edition in. Is there a link that
will lead me to where the problems are discussed, such as
having a partition greater than 32 GB, and whether those
problems apply also to XP-Pro Edition.......? I can install
either one....... Also, if I have to partition it, will that
happen during XP Setup, or do I do it first somehow,
or later, or what?
Click to expand...

XP will format any partition bigger than 32GB in the NTFS file system
(whether XP Home or Pro) and, although you can *use* bigger FAT32
partitions made with other tools, I would not do so.

Also I would definitely *not* make an 80 GB disk into a single partition
anyway. Have a modest size one for System and programs - say 12GB,
which I would make NTFS - and ensure that data files go on a different
one. This makes it more difficult to do real damage, much easier to
have a backup of the system partition *should* it get damaged, and
isolates your data from that.

You make the system partition, on a blank disk, as part of the setup
after booting the XP CD direct. Then once running, go to Control Panel
- Admin Tools - Computer Management, select Disk Management and look
lower right for the graphic of the drive. and r-click in the Unallocated
space to create Partition (one or two, depending on how you want to use
it). Have a read at
http://aumha.org/win4/a/parts.htm
for considerations - while it is written in terms of Win98 and smaller
hard disks, it does explain the principles well
 
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