Disk Management Tool in XP Upgrade

[hiredgun56]

Problem: Seagate Hard Drive 80 gb.; and XP is only recognizing 33 gig.
File system was installed as Fat 32.

The Disk Management tool will not function, to find lost hard drive
space, which is over 40 Gig.

Question: Am I to assume that the Disk Mangement tool will only
function when the File table is NTFS?

Gee, I'd actually like to use the 40 gig....I like to use what I pay
for....

Thanks....

 

[Ted Zieglar]

If you need to format a volume that is larger than 32 GB, use the NTFS file
system.

 

[John John]

It will see it if you format it with another disk utility, like fdisk
from a Windows 98 setup disk DOS boot, or Partition Magic, BootItNG etc.
Formating a hard drive 80GB FAT32 is an incredible waste of storage
space, best to format it NTFS, if you must share the drive with a FAT32
operating system then format the drive with other tools.

John

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Problem: Seagate Hard Drive 80 gb.; and XP is only recognizing 33 gig.
File system was installed as Fat 32.

Windows XP will not create a FAT32 partition larger than 32GB (although it
will happily use one if it is first created externally). You are running
into that limit.

The Disk Management tool will not function, to find lost hard drive
space, which is over 40 Gig.

It's not lost space., it's just unpartitioned space. You can't use it until
it's partitioned.

Question: Am I to assume that the Disk Mangement tool will only
function when the File table is NTFS?

No, that's not correct. The unpartitioned isn't even NTFS. It doesn't even
have a file system until you've partitioned it.

It sounds like you're just doing something wrong. Read here: "How to use
Disk Management to configure basic disks in Windows XP" at
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309000

 

[hiredgun56]

Okay...let me go step by step: maybe this will help other folx
too....which is why we're here...

I had to reinstall my OS due to MS updates conflicts.

I had a FAT 32 Partition allocated 35 gig...and a NTFS partition 33
gig, that i had to delete.

I took the advice of Seagate, and completely zero-ed out the
drive...took about 5 hours. seeing I was having problems deleting the
NTFS partition.

The puter is a HP pavilion, with WIN ME. I got into FDISK, and had
problems setting partitions. After I finally got a DOS primary
partition installed, I used the HP recovery disks to reinstall the
system.

After I reinstalled the OS, I upgraded to XP Home. this is probably at
least the 6th time in 3 years I've had to reinstall the XP update.

Now, my puter is only seeing 33 gig of storage, and I cant find the
rest of it. Disk Management in XP is greyed out, expect for open,
explore, and properties.

Now....I'm trying to find the rest of the HD storage....which I can't
seem to do.

The system runs fine, just have only 33 gig out of 74 after formatting,
to use.

I've installed the system before, never had problems like this.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Okay...let me go step by step: maybe this will help other folx
too....which is why we're here...

I had to reinstall my OS due to MS updates conflicts.

I had a FAT 32 Partition allocated 35 gig...and a NTFS partition 33
gig, that i had to delete.

I took the advice of Seagate, and completely zero-ed out the
drive...took about 5 hours. seeing I was having problems deleting the
NTFS partition.

The puter is a HP pavilion, with WIN ME. I got into FDISK, and had
problems setting partitions. After I finally got a DOS primary
partition installed, I used the HP recovery disks to reinstall the
system.

After I reinstalled the OS, I upgraded to XP Home.

All of this was entirely unnecessary. You didn't need to zero-fill the
drive, you didn't need to use FDISK for anything, and you didn't need to
install Windows Me before using the Windows XP Upgrade.

The requirement to use an upgrade version is to *own* a previous qualifying
version's installation CD (with an OEM restore CD, see below), not to have
it installed. When setup doesn't find a previous qualifying version
installed, it will prompt you to insert its CD as proof of ownership. Just
insert the previous version's CD, and follow the prompts. Everything
proceeds quite normally and quite legitimately.

You can also do a clean installation if you have an OEM restore CD of a
previous qualifying version. It's more complicated, but it *can* be done.
First restore from the Restore CD. Then run the XP upgrade CD from within
that restored system, and change from Upgrade to New Install. When it asks
where, press Esc to delete the partition and start over.

Since you apparently just did this and don't really have much, if anything,
but the operating system on the drive yet, if I were you, I'd just start
over. Do a clean installation by booting from the XP Upgrade CD (change the
BIOS boot order if necessary to accomplish this) and follow the prompts for
a clean installation (delete the existing partition by pressing "D" when
prompted, then create a new one--preferably NTFS, not FAT32, since you
apparently want it all in a single partition.).

You can find detailed instructions here:
http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

or here http://windowsxp.mvps.org/XPClean.htm

or here http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/clean_install.htm

this is probably at
least the 6th time in 3 years I've had to reinstall the XP update.

That's extraordinary. Why? With reasonably good maintenance, you should
never have to do that. I've run Windows 3.0, 3.1, WFWG 3.11, Windows 95,
Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Windows XP, each for the period of time before
the next version came out, and each on two machines here. I never
reinstalled any of them, and I have never had anything more than an
occasional minor problem.

 

[hiredgun56]

Well Ken....with companies like Symantec, AVG, McAfee..and the such,
I've had most of the problems with XP updates and Symantec Firewall and
AV programs conflicting with SP2 and other MS products.

Ask any average consumer, but thats about the size of it....6 in 3
years is pretty common for the most part...I know of people that have
installed their OS completely 3 times within a year, so my posting
shouldnt seem that out of this world...

By the way...thanks for all the help....

 

[Ted Zieglar]

I have not reinstalled Windows XP once since I first turned it on almost 4
years ago. No reason to.

Installing SP 2 was a snap for me, and never a problem since.

I'm no computer genius, trust me. I've simply learned how to use my computer
wisely by reading carefully and planning thoroughly.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Well Ken....with companies like Symantec, AVG, McAfee..and the such,
I've had most of the problems with XP updates and Symantec Firewall
and AV programs conflicting with SP2 and other MS products.

Ask any average consumer, but thats about the size of it....6 in 3
years is pretty common for the most part...I know of people that have
installed their OS completely 3 times within a year, so my posting
shouldnt seem that out of this world...

I know many average consumers, and I'm often the one who has set up their
computers for them. None of them have ever reinstalled. I don't agree that
"6 in 3 years is pretty common for the most part."

By the way...thanks for all the help....

You're welcome. Glad to help, even if we disagree about reinstalling.

 

[hiredgun56]

BTW....I just began again after all this...did a format C: in DOS,
forgot about the partitioning problems, and lo and behold....the damn
thing allocated the whole drive, even in FAT 32...

with an 80 gig afer formatting: 74 gig available...in FAT 32.

Nuts, ain't it?

 

[Frank Saunders, MS-MVP OE]

BTW....I just began again after all this...did a format C: in DOS,
forgot about the partitioning problems, and lo and behold....the damn
thing allocated the whole drive, even in FAT 32...

with an 80 gig afer formatting: 74 gig available...in FAT 32.

Nuts, ain't it?

What's nuts about it?
You formatted from DOS so of course it's FAT32.
While WinXP is limited to 32 GB when formatting FAT32, DOS isn't. WinXP can
use the full 74 GB.
If you mean that it's 74 GB and not 80, different ways of figuring size
between drive manufacturers and Windows systems.

 

[John John]

BTW....I just began again after all this...did a format C: in DOS,
forgot about the partitioning problems, and lo and behold....the damn
thing allocated the whole drive, even in FAT 32...

with an 80 gig afer formatting: 74 gig available...in FAT 32.

Nuts, ain't it?

Everyone who replied told you that earlier. Windows XP cannot format
FAT32 volumes any bigger than 32GB but it CAN mount larger FAT32 volumes
formated by other disk tools. DOS fdisk CAN format FAT32 drives
larger than 32GB and Windows XP just mounted it, nothing so strange
about that.

Yet, I don't know why you insist on using FAT32 instead of NTFS but it
should make you feel good to know that by choosing to format an 80 gig
drive to FAT32 that due to cluster size you have just lost about 20 to
25% of the available storage space on the drive. With NTFS the lost
space would be about 2 to 4%, not to mention that FAT32 has practically
NO NT security features available to it.

John

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

BTW....I just began again after all this...did a format C: in DOS,
forgot about the partitioning problems, and lo and behold....the damn
thing allocated the whole drive, even in FAT 32...

with an 80 gig afer formatting: 74 gig available...in FAT 32.

Nuts, ain't it?

Not at all nuts. That's exactly what you should expect when you doi it in
DOS.

 

[Chuck Davis]

You will find many advantages when using NTFS. You can convert without
harming any files on your computer. Our computer club installed Windows XP
Pro 4 years ago on 28 computers. Converted to NTFS on all of them. We
haven't had to reinstall since. People tend to remember in the past when
that was the only way to recover... Our 12 "house call" persons regularly
convert member's computers to NTFS when they find FAT during routine
maintenance.

 

[hiredgun56]

First off..thanks for all the replies...they were helpful and duely
noted...

The whole thing that began all this...was FDISK not letting me
partition drives. I have used FDISK in the past...and never had a
problem, until now.

I can always convert FAT32 to NTFS, not a problem, and it is a better
file system to utilize.

But I couldn't figure out for the life of me, why FDISK wouldn't work.
I think back upon it, and I Don't recall doing anything out of the
norm. A few days back, I did have a difficult time uninstalling a NTFS
partition, but once I got rid of that and wiped the drive clean, I just
wanted to get the thing up and running again, so I just "format c:" and
it recognized the whole drive capacity.

I've heard good and bad about FDISK in Win ME and using it with XP. I
read a post about installing the XP upgrade without installing it over
ME, which I thought was standard protocol. Again, learned something.

I suppose, investing in Symantec Partition Magic isn't a bad idea to
alleviate problems like this in the future. The reviews I have read
seem to make partitioning a bit easier, and the programs gives you more
HDD options.

To Ken and Steve and Chuck and John John, I know alot of people don't
take the time to say thanks for all the words and suggestions...so....

Thanks.....

Rick

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

To Ken and Steve and Chuck and John John, I know alot of people don't
take the time to say thanks for all the words and suggestions...so....

You're welcome. Glad to help.

 

[Chuck Davis]

First off..thanks for all the replies...they were helpful and duely
noted...

The whole thing that began all this...was FDISK not letting me
partition drives. I have used FDISK in the past...and never had a
problem, until now.

I can always convert FAT32 to NTFS, not a problem, and it is a better
file system to utilize.

But I couldn't figure out for the life of me, why FDISK wouldn't work.
I think back upon it, and I Don't recall doing anything out of the
norm. A few days back, I did have a difficult time uninstalling a NTFS
partition, but once I got rid of that and wiped the drive clean, I just
wanted to get the thing up and running again, so I just "format c:" and
it recognized the whole drive capacity.

I've heard good and bad about FDISK in Win ME and using it with XP. I
read a post about installing the XP upgrade without installing it over
ME, which I thought was standard protocol. Again, learned something.

I suppose, investing in Symantec Partition Magic isn't a bad idea to
alleviate problems like this in the future. The reviews I have read
seem to make partitioning a bit easier, and the programs gives you more
HDD options.

To Ken and Steve and Chuck and John John, I know alot of people don't
take the time to say thanks for all the words and suggestions...so....

Thanks.....

Rick

You are welcome.