Unallocated disk space

[Walo]

Hard drive was replaced after crashing. Running an
upgraded XP Home Edition from Windows ME. The actual hard
drive is 70G but shows the drive as 15G with the
remainder unallocated. File system is FAT 32 so XP tells
me I can't extend the current drive because of the FAT
32. Basic home computer with lots of photo editing. What
is the best way to allocate the remainder of the hard
drive. If I'm not mistaken, the extended partition can't
be larger than 32G. Do I create two extended partitions?
Logical drive? Any help would be appreciated.

 

[NobodyMan]

Hard drive was replaced after crashing. Running an
upgraded XP Home Edition from Windows ME. The actual hard
drive is 70G but shows the drive as 15G with the
remainder unallocated. File system is FAT 32 so XP tells
me I can't extend the current drive because of the FAT
32. Basic home computer with lots of photo editing. What
is the best way to allocate the remainder of the hard
drive. If I'm not mistaken, the extended partition can't
be larger than 32G. Do I create two extended partitions?
Logical drive? Any help would be appreciated.

You could create extended partions and use logical drives on them.

Better yet, dump FAT32 and convert the drive to NTFS. Then use a
program like Partition Magic to dynamically resize the partion to
encompass the enitre drive if you wish.

 

[Bob Harris]

The XP disk management console can make one or more partition out of the
extra space. If a partition is greater than 32 Gig, XP will insist that it
be NTFS. If smaller, you can chose NTFS or FAT32. The is no 32 Gig
limitation on the size of an extended partition, at least not under XP. I
have one that is over 80 Gig. Also, if some other software makes a FAT32
partition larger than 32 Gig, XP will handle it fine. I have a 46 Gig
partition that is FAT32.

If you wish to increase the size of an existing partition, without losing
all data, then you need a third-party program like Partition Magic. It
could stretch C:\ into some or all of the unallocated space.

However, 15 Gig is really plenty large for C:\, if you only store programs
and the operating system on it. For many reasons, consider making at least
one other partition and store data on that.

For example, in the event of a system problem, you can then
repair/restore/re-install C:\, without losing the information on the data
partition(s). Further, you can easily backup data to CD, DVD, external USB
drives, etc by COPY, XCOPY, windows explorer, etc. More complex software is
required to backup the parition with the operating system (e.g., Norton
GHOST, Acronis TrueImage, etc). Finally, you don't need to backup the
OS+programs very often, unless you constantly tweak the system, whereas your
data, well, you might want to perform and incremental backup of that every
day, if it changes that often.