Partition & Format Drive

[Frank]

New HP notebook came with Win XP installed. HD is 60 GB.
HD shows 57 + Gb partitioned for NTFS and 8 GB
unpartioned. I would like to delete Win XP and load Win
2000 Pro on notebook. Win2000 Pro will load but only uses
the 57 GB of partion. Question: How can I delete the 8 GB
of unpartioned space and repartition the entire 60 GB of
HD I have and then load Win 2000 Pro on it ??

Thanks for any help.
Frank.........

 

[Chris Lanier]

Hi, 57+8=65GB. Do you mean it shows 8 "MB" of unparitioned space?

 

[Guest]

Yes, I'm sorry. There is 8 MB that is unpartitioned and un-
formatted.
Why would there be any portion of the HD that one cannot
partition and format ?

 

[CS]

New HP notebook came with Win XP installed. HD is 60 GB.
HD shows 57 + Gb partitioned for NTFS and 8 GB
unpartioned. I would like to delete Win XP and load Win
2000 Pro on notebook. Win2000 Pro will load but only uses
the 57 GB of partion. Question: How can I delete the 8 GB
of unpartioned space and repartition the entire 60 GB of
HD I have and then load Win 2000 Pro on it ??

Thanks for any help.
Frank.........

Hi Frank:

You can do it with third party software. Partition Magic from
www.powerquest.com or BootIt Next Generation from
www.terabyteunlimited.com.

Word of caution here: Make sure you can obtain all the drivers you
need to run Win2000 on your HP notebook. HP uses proprietary
hardware and drivers. Also consider that you will probably not be
able to get any help from HP tech support by changing the OS, and
possibly void your warranty.

(Not that HP tech support is all that great anyway!)

Regards, and a Happy New Year.

 

[Ken Blake]

In (e-mail address removed)

Yes, I'm sorry. There is 8 MB that is unpartitioned and un-
formatted.
Why would there be any portion of the HD that one cannot
partition and format ?

Don't worry about 8MB. It's a tiny amount.

The reason you can only get 57GB of your 60GB drive is that it's
really a 57GB drive, not 60GB.

All hard drive manufacturers, in a deceptive attempt to make
their drives seem larger than they are, define 1GB as
1,000,000,000 bytes, while the rest of the computer world,
including Windows, defines it as 1024 x 1024 x 1024
(1,073,741,824) bytes. Do the arithmetic yourself, and you'll see
that 57GB is roughly 60 billion bytes.

--
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
Please reply to the newsgroup

 

[Alex Nichol]

Yes, I'm sorry. There is 8 MB that is unpartitioned and un-
formatted.
Why would there be any portion of the HD that one cannot
partition and format ?

The very first sector of a drive is used for the 'Master boot record'.
Because partitions are normally made to be aligned to cylinder
boundaries, the remains of the first cylinder - just under 8MB - go to
waste. This usually gets hidden, but sometimes shows as unpartitioned
space

 

[Guest]

all responses are probably good thinking., but may i add another point to ponder
that 8mb partition is usually "hidden" hp and other manufactures install drivers "proprietary info" etc..... there
just check techtv website ( i just saw them talk about it recently on techTV so, maybe they've posted to their website So I would think that it would be neccesary to have all oem cd's before messing with it
besides it is a small, very small amount to worry about the trouble if any of these respones is partially right.