No Driver Required?

[Mickey Mouse]

I've had a new system built for me. Included is a WD Caviar SE16 400gig
HD.
The retailer has told me that a WD driver is not required to install it.
Well, he appears to be right as it's indicated correctly in my bios, they
formatted it for me as C-200gig and D-200gig, I know because they showed me.
Because they installed with their Windows XP my product key (legit) didn't
work. All I had to do after bringing it home was call Microsoft for a key
but instead I decided to install with my own windows xp formatting first
from the windows xp installation disk. When I tried this the screen
indicated only a C drive of 130gig and no D drive!
I've tried F disk and it only showed one partition = C at 130gig, what's
happened to D?
I deleted the C partition and tried formatting but still can't get 400 gig
recognised. How do I get my 400gig back? I can take the machine back but I
still want to know how to fix this problem. I suspect D is still there
somewhere, maybe. How do I format the whole thing to 400 gig? I'll worry
about partitioning then.

Mickey.

 

[Glen]

You need to boot with the Widows XP disc which is bootable. Fdisk is the old
dos program and doesnt support ntfs, it might list the ntfs partition as non
standard or non dos and only show 130 gig of the drive. Boot with the XP
disc and follow the prompts to install XP. Set up Windows the way you want
your C drive to appear then after windows is setup use disc management to
setup the other partions/drives.

There are so many web site dedicated to installing XP here's one to get you
started.

http://www.theeldergeek.com/clean_installation_of_windows_xp.htm

Google for more.

Glen P

 

[Robert Moir]

but instead I decided to install
with my own windows xp formatting first from the windows xp
installation disk. When I tried this the screen indicated only a C
drive of 130gig and no D drive! I've tried F disk and it only showed
one partition = C at 130gig, what's happened to D?
I deleted the C partition and tried formatting but still can't get
400 gig recognised. How do I get my 400gig back? I can take the
machine back but I still want to know how to fix this problem. I
suspect D is still there somewhere, maybe. How do I format the whole
thing to 400 gig? I'll worry about partitioning then.

To see the whole disk you need to use XP SP1 installed, if I remember
rightly. If your Windows install media doesn't include XP SP1 or SP2 then
this would cause your problem.

There are lots of sites around that give instructions on how to integrate
SP2 into your base Windows install so I suggest you check out one of those
if you think this might be your problem.

Or you could create one 100GB partition for the OS, install into that and
upgrade to the latest service pack before proceeding to partition and format
the rest of the disk if that sounds easier to you; while you won't be able
to then increase the first partition past the initial size very easily, most
people would say that 100GB for the OS is ample room. (I have a 60GB OS
partition carved out of about 800GB of disk space and I'm not even close to
filling it and I run some very complex and disk-hungry stuff.)

One small but VERY important point on a slightly different note: You
partition the disk first and then you format the partitions you have
created... you appear to have this idea backwards in your last paragraph
above, and if you're looking to setup a new hard disk then it is very
important to understand what it is you're doing.

--

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Robert

An informative post.

6GB is sufficient in a closely managed environment.


--

Regards.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England

Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(I have a 60GB OS partition carved out of about 800GB of disk space and I'm
not even close to
<filling it and I run some very complex and disk-hungry stuff.)