Format and Partition new slave hdd

[GeeWhiz]

Hi there,

I just installed a new 200GB Maxtor hdd as a slave to my main drive using
Windows XP Pro/SP2.

I opened Disk Management, saw the drive and formatted it. It formatted in
'Simple' Layout/'Dynamic' Type and I can't get any partitioning options.
I've probably set it up wrong but I can't figure out how to remedy it.

Can someone help set me on the right track? The drive is going to be used
for storage but I would like to have partitions and be able to create
folders in the partitions without having to do drag-n-drop or Send to.


Thanks in advance,

George

 

[Ghostrider]

Hi there,

I just installed a new 200GB Maxtor hdd as a slave to my main drive using
Windows XP Pro/SP2.

I opened Disk Management, saw the drive and formatted it. It formatted in
'Simple' Layout/'Dynamic' Type and I can't get any partitioning options.
I've probably set it up wrong but I can't figure out how to remedy it.

Can someone help set me on the right track? The drive is going to be used
for storage but I would like to have partitions and be able to create
folders in the partitions without having to do drag-n-drop or Send to.


Thanks in advance,

George

Best to have set up the 200 GB Maxtor as an extended drive
with logical partitions.

 

[Sharon F]

Hi there,

I just installed a new 200GB Maxtor hdd as a slave to my main drive using
Windows XP Pro/SP2.

I opened Disk Management, saw the drive and formatted it. It formatted in
'Simple' Layout/'Dynamic' Type and I can't get any partitioning options.
I've probably set it up wrong but I can't figure out how to remedy it.

Can someone help set me on the right track? The drive is going to be used
for storage but I would like to have partitions and be able to create
folders in the partitions without having to do drag-n-drop or Send to.


Thanks in advance,

George

Dynamic drives are treated as folders instead of additional drive space. It
sounds like you're going to want to convert this disk to basic. Once that's
done, you'll be able to create multiple partitions.

See the following article for more details:
How To Convert to Basic and Dynamic Disks in Windows XP Professional
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=309044

 

[Keith S]

Hi there,

I just installed a new 200GB Maxtor hdd as a slave to my main drive using
Windows XP Pro/SP2.

I opened Disk Management, saw the drive and formatted it. It formatted in
'Simple' Layout/'Dynamic' Type and I can't get any partitioning options.
I've probably set it up wrong but I can't figure out how to remedy it.

Can someone help set me on the right track? The drive is going to be used
for storage but I would like to have partitions and be able to create
folders in the partitions without having to do drag-n-drop or Send to.


Thanks in advance,

George

If you already formatted it, there wont be any partitioning options.

 

[GeeWhiz]

Dynamic drives are treated as folders instead of additional drive space.
It
sounds like you're going to want to convert this disk to basic. Once
that's
done, you'll be able to create multiple partitions.

See the following article for more details:
How To Convert to Basic and Dynamic Disks in Windows XP Professional
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=309044

Sorry for the long delay in getting back to you. Thanks for the responses.

I folowed the instructions listed on the MS site to convert Dynamic to
Basic. I deleted the existing volume as per instructions which changes the
'grey' area to black. When I right click on the area, which MS says should
be 'grey' but it now isn't, I get no option to change Dynamic to Basic. The
only options there are "New Volume", "Properties" and "Help"


Still at a loss. I haven't tried DiskPart at the cmd prompt as suggested by
AndrewE.

George

 

[Sharon F]

I folowed the instructions listed on the MS site to convert Dynamic to
Basic. I deleted the existing volume as per instructions which changes the
'grey' area to black. When I right click on the area, which MS says should
be 'grey' but it now isn't, I get no option to change Dynamic to Basic. The
only options there are "New Volume", "Properties" and "Help"


Still at a loss. I haven't tried DiskPart at the cmd prompt as suggested by
AndrewE.

Black is unallocated space. When you deleted the volume, were there any
remaining volumes listed as Dynamic? If yes, delete those too. If no, skip
to the option to create a new volume. When it's created, then format and do
not choose the simple/dynamic option that was chosen last time.

There is a "checklist" in Disk Management's Help file that walks you
through the creation of partitions and formatting. May want to keep that
visible and refer to it as you work through this.

Worse case scenario: You'll end up with a dynamic disk again and will have
to try again. Best case: You'll have a basic disk with partitions that can
be assigned drive letters.

Aside: Normally new drives are added as basic instead of dynamic unless the
user takes extra steps for dynamic. However, I ran into the same thing as
you when adding a Maxtor drive a while back. Taking the only options
offered along the way I also ended up with a dynamic drive. I worked
through the same steps you are working with now. After a few tries, I
finally got the basic disk setup that I wanted. About a month later, I was
poking around on the Maxtor site and found a link in their knowledge base
about some of their drives having a tendency to setup as dynamic instead of
basic. I never read the article in its entirety since it was fixable but
found it interesting that the series of events was not "all my fault."
Thought you might like to know that too.

 

[GeeWhiz]

Black is unallocated space. When you deleted the volume, were there any
remaining volumes listed as Dynamic? If yes, delete those too. If no, skip
to the option to create a new volume. When it's created, then format and
do
not choose the simple/dynamic option that was chosen last time.

There is a "checklist" in Disk Management's Help file that walks you
through the creation of partitions and formatting. May want to keep that
visible and refer to it as you work through this.

Worse case scenario: You'll end up with a dynamic disk again and will have
to try again. Best case: You'll have a basic disk with partitions that can
be assigned drive letters.

Aside: Normally new drives are added as basic instead of dynamic unless
the
user takes extra steps for dynamic. However, I ran into the same thing as
you when adding a Maxtor drive a while back. Taking the only options
offered along the way I also ended up with a dynamic drive. I worked
through the same steps you are working with now. After a few tries, I
finally got the basic disk setup that I wanted. About a month later, I was
poking around on the Maxtor site and found a link in their knowledge base
about some of their drives having a tendency to setup as dynamic instead
of
basic. I never read the article in its entirety since it was fixable but
found it interesting that the series of events was not "all my fault."
Thought you might like to know that too.

Thanks Sharon for the help. I've been so busy I haven't had much time to
address this problem. It's good to know it wasn't "all my fault".

I'll be heading over to the Maxtor site for that article.

Thanks again,

George