ant1 Posted February 19, 2004 Report Share Posted February 19, 2004 Allright a little background, I come from a Imac background and built my present PC last January with a friend of mine, well he did the building I slung the plastic. So my knowledge of computer inards is limited. I am running low on hardrive space and want to add another hardrive.The new hardrive will contain my documents. I am running xp pro and do not have a boot disc. My questions are: 1) I have 60 gigs right now partitioned , C/ being 20gigs containing operating system and applications, D/ being 40gigs containing my documents. Can I reformat my hardrive to be more along the lines of 40 gigs for C, 20 gigs for D? 2) Can i install a new hardrive without having a copy of my operating system? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whooter Posted February 19, 2004 Report Share Posted February 19, 2004 1) Without something like PartitionMagic, it won't be easy. You'll have to backup all your data, wipe the hard disk, and re-partition either with FDISK or during OS install. Of course, are you saying you don't have the Win XP disc? If not, you're really stuck with something like PM. 2) Yes. As long as you're just installing the new drive as a slave, you should be able to just hook it up, set jumpers as needed, and your BIOS should recognize it, as will Windows. You will have to format it in Windows before you can store anything on it, though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robot Monkey Posted February 19, 2004 Report Share Posted February 19, 2004 Originally posted by Whooter@Feb 19 2004, 10:47 AM ... You will have to format it in Windows before you can store anything on it, though. I didn't need to do this on the last two HDD I installed. IIRC. -j Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whooter Posted February 19, 2004 Report Share Posted February 19, 2004 Originally posted by Robot Monkey+Feb 19 2004, 09:58 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Robot Monkey @ Feb 19 2004, 09:58 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-Whooter@Feb 19 2004, 10:47 AM ... You will have to format it in Windows before you can store anything on it, though. I didn't need to do this on the last two HDD I installed. IIRC. -j [/b] Really? Came pre-formatted in FAT32 or NTFS or something? How'd they know it was going into a Windows box? Of course, maybe I don't RC, since it's been awhile since I added one... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ant1 Posted February 19, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 19, 2004 Ok partition magic looks like the answer. Now how do i go about formatting my new hardrive? Does a dialogue box come up after i install , or is it a utility built into XP Pro? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iainl Posted February 19, 2004 Report Share Posted February 19, 2004 To be honest, I'd seriously question why you need to do so. If you've only currently got the one 60Gb drive, and another is going in as slave, it will appear (once formatted) as E: (also note that this will push all your removable drives down a letter, possibly breaking the protection schemes on half your stuff, which is always fun). So why not just take the stuff you need to reinstall due to the changes anyway and put them on your old D: now documents sit on E:? Much simpler than messing with PM. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iainl Posted February 19, 2004 Report Share Posted February 19, 2004 Originally posted by ant1@Feb 19 2004, 04:09 PM how do i go about formatting my new hardrive? Does a dialogue box come up after i install , or is it a utility built into XP Pro? Its pretty easy. Launch Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management. Then, within the Computer Management tool click on Disk Management and you'll see all your hard disks. Select the unformatted one and format it to NTFS (or Fat32 if you need it to be readable by Linux/Macos directly). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robot Monkey Posted February 19, 2004 Report Share Posted February 19, 2004 I'm thinking I *did* have to format the the earlier 120 gig. I remember running the tool. The more recent, 160 gig, I'm not sure about. I seem to remember it being FAT32 out of the box and then reformatting it for NTFS. But I really can't remember with any precision. -j Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ant1 Posted February 19, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 19, 2004 Originally posted by iainl@Feb 19 2004, 11:13 AMSo why not just take the stuff you need to reinstall due to the changes anyway and put them on your old D: now documents sit on E:? Much simpler than messing with PM. Not sure what you are getting at here? Are you saying install any new programs on D as opposed to making C bigger? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iainl Posted February 19, 2004 Report Share Posted February 19, 2004 Yep, thats the short version. The slightly longer version is that there are some annying games that assume that your CD drive won't move, and so if it was E: when you installed it, it will only check E: when its ensuring you're not a nasty pirate. So you'll be having to reinstall them (or just hack the registry or wherever they recorded this little tidbit) anyway. There is bound to be some stuff on C: that can move in any case. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ant1 Posted February 19, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 19, 2004 So if i have no games to worry about fubaring, is it safe to just make C larger? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whooter Posted February 19, 2004 Report Share Posted February 19, 2004 Should be. Also, a trick I learned a long time ago, was to set all my CD/DVD drives to the last letters of the alphabet for drive letters. (IE. right now I have just a CD-RW drive, and it's Z:) That way, if you do want to add an HDD or maybe re-partition one, you don't fux0r anything like that... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ant1 Posted February 19, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 19, 2004 Ok just a couple more questions :oops: Should i partition my new drive for any reason, it will be holding the usual suspects-music,pics.... If i add more RAM do i have to get an exact match of what i have right now? Is it worth going up from 512? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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