Unpartitioned versus Partitioned Disk

[Guest]

I'm building a clean install XP. What is the difference between
'unpartitioned' and 'partitioned' space? I want to install XP onto one of the
two. What's the advantage or disadvantage of either one? I'm in a corporate
environment. I'll be installing SP2 & Office2K3 SP2. Thanks for your
responses.

 

[David R. Norton MVP Shell/User]

I'm building a clean install XP. What is the difference between
'unpartitioned' and 'partitioned' space? I want to install XP onto one of the
two. What's the advantage or disadvantage of either one? I'm in a corporate
environment. I'll be installing SP2 & Office2K3 SP2. Thanks for your
responses.

Unpartitioned space is not usable by XP, you'll need to create a partition
in the unpartitioned space and format it before XP can do anything with it.

About partitions, many people will partition their disk into two or more
partitions and install XP on one (usually the "C:" partiton) and use the
other partition(s) for data storage.

 

[lurkswithin]

Unpartitioned space is basically all the space of a drive that has not
been partitioned and formatted. A less confusing way would be to call
it the unformatted sections of a hard drive as in order to format the
drive it must be sized as to how much space is available to be
formatted and then and only then can it be formatted. Once formatted
it is now considered a partition. You cannot install in an
unpartitioned (unformatted) space.
************************************************************
Please note that there is always an 8mb of space that is left at the
front of a drive and is left unavailable for use in the initial
partitioning and formating of a drive. This space is left so as to be
able to make the drive a "Dynamic Drive" and is kept hidden
from the user in all FAT formatted drives but can be seen in NTFS. It
is not formatted until the drive is made dynamic or a special program
formats it for a space for boot management controls to be installed
for dual booting multiple operating systems.
************************************************************
Also there is an issue of one file system not recognizing another
different type of file system. This issue will cause space on a drive
to be considered as unpartitioned/unformatted.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I'm building a clean install XP. What is the difference between
'unpartitioned' and 'partitioned' space?

When you buy a drive, it normally comes without any partitions on it--*all*
unpartitioned space. In order to use the drive, you have to "partition"
it--create one or more partitions, set up with a particular file system,
cluster size, etc.

Normally , this partitioning is done as part of the Windows XP installation,
and most people create only a single partition, using all of the available
space. Some people choose to have two or more partitions, but it's very rare
that anyone leaves any space unpartitioned, since space can't be used unless
it's in a partition.

I want to install XP onto
one of the two. What's the advantage or disadvantage of either one?

It's not a matter of advantages or disadvantages. There's no choice at all.
Unpartioned space is not usable. You can't install Windows on it or use it
for *anything* until you partition it.

I'm in a corporate environment. I'll be installing SP2 & Office2K3
SP2. Thanks for your responses.

You say "a clean install XP." Assuming that that means you are starting from
scratch and that there's nothing on the drive you want to keep, just boot
from the Windows XP 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).
That procedure will partition and format the drive for you.

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