Partitioning large HD under XP

[Lobster]

I'm about to replace the old (very full!) 40Gb HD in my PC with a 250Gb one. I've been trying to get my head around the ins and outs of doing this, and have ascertained that I need 48-bit LBA (whatever the hell that is), which has necessitated upgrading the bios (have done that); and also that there Win XP won't recognise HDs over 127 Gb unless you have SP1/2 installed. I have an old original XP Home installation CD, and since I have to install that on the HD in question, AIUI I need to partition the new HD with a sub-127GB C drive, and install XP on that.

And I should partition the HD using the NTFS file system for all partitions.

Is that all correct so far?

So, I'm interested in how best to partition my new HD... I've read various recommendations for placing Windows in 1 partition, Program Files in another, and leaving the lion's share of the disk for My Documents etc and other data files. Is this a good plan? I seem to remember trying something like this under Windows 95 many moons ago, and was frustrated that many programs seemed to insist on installing themselves on C.

I'd be very interested in other's experience, and recommendations for partition sizes. And of course whether I've already made some dreadful mistake in my assumptions so far...!

Thanks David

[tony sayer]

In article , Lobster scribeth thus

If you haven't got the new drive yet a Seagate with Discwizard will do that, format and copy all the stuff over from the old to the new drive ..dun this a few times now to replace duff Maxtor drives!..

[Lobster]

Hmm. Just bought a Maxtor! :-(

David

[George]

Oh! dear. :-(

[Adrian C]

David, have a gander at Maxblast

[PeterK]

I understand you are replacing your existing HD not installing a new HD and then installing XP on that. Have a look at

(page 2 references maxtor's Maxblast software - link now broken (seagate now own maxtor) but see for drive hardware installation and operating system partition instructions. ( AFAIK the size limit you reference is for a clean install of XP to an unformatted drive using FAT32 file system) You should have no size issues under XP if you opt for NTFS file system - as used in W2000 & Vista.

Cloning software - Personal Computer World October 07 edition gave a free copy of Paragon Partition Manager v8.5 that will transfer your old c: to the new drive and being early Sept you might just find a copy!

I've migrated XP to larger discs twice and never had a problem - except at the back of my mind XP gives each hard drive it sees a number and stores it and I have read that its possible, through installing the drives incorrectly to get XP wanting the old drive to boot from - perhaps there's an expert out there who can expand/correct.

PeterK

PeterK

[Andy Hall]

I would send it back. Seriously. Reliability is not good. I've seen failure rates across a population of a few hundred drives of approx 10x other makes. Sometimes these are media failures, sometimes hard failures.

Seagate tend to be good, as do Western Digital.

[Conor]

Utter bollocks. Had mine for 3 years now and no problem. I've used Maxtors in a lot of builds without problems.

[Lobster]

Thanks for this. I'd intended to start from scratch with a clean install of XP as my current installation is quite old and a bit flakey... am I wrong in thinking that if I use any of these cloning/mirroring methods instead, then I'll simply reproduce the "flakiness"?

(Haven't even yet received my Maxtor, so will have a think about whether it's going back or not... :-( )

David

[Bob Eager]

I run a lot of disks 24/7. Over the last ten years I've had three failures...from a selection of Seagate, Samsung, Western Digital and Maxtor.

All the drives that failed - catastrophically I may add - were Maxtor.

[Mike Barnes]

I don't see the value in separating Windows and applications.

My usual drive letter assignments, plus actual sizes (used/total Gb) for my 300 Gb disk:

C: 9/20 Windows and applications D: 2/10 My Documents, other application data files, and downloads N: 90/250 Copies of CDs and other stuff that never needs to be backed up P: 7/8 Paging T: 0/8 Temp

I like drive letters to be associated with backup strategy. So D: is backed up nightly to a hard drive in an outbuilding; C: and D: are backed up to tape every week; other drives are never backed up.

As you can see there's lots of spare capacity (mainly because I don't keep photos or videos on this PC). I use Partition Magic to painlessly adjust partition sizes when needed.

[PeterK]

I'd do a clean install if I was unhappy with the current performance and had all my original program cd's to hand. If you can clean your old drive up a bit to release space then before you start run the files and settings transfer wizard see

creating a transfer file on the old drive (see stage 10 under Run the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard on your old computer on the above page) You can then install your new drive as c:\ install XP and then install your old drive as D: (jumpers may need changing depending on their existing settings and the type of ATA cable you have (40 or 80 conductor but the connector remains unchanged at 40 pin) and copy the settings off that one.

PeterK

[Mike Barnes]

You're quite right. A clean install is the way to go, unless you're

*seriously* short of time, or you find it impossible to reinstall one or more applications due to lost media etc.

[Ron Lowe]

Since you've updated the BIOS, the obvious thing to do is to install with SP1 or 2. XP Gold is now in the unsupported junkyard.

Create an install CD with SP2 pre-installed in it. This is called slipstreaming.

It involves copying your old Xp-gold cd to Hard Disk, Downloading the full SP2, and then applying the SP to the disk image, then burning the updated image back to CD.

Then, when youinstal XP, it will be pre-loaded with SP2.

This an be done manually, or by varoius downloadable programs. Google XP SP2 slipstream.

[John of Aix]

Don't worry, I've had a couple of Maxtors for years without any problem. There is also a thing at Maxtor (Maxtor Plus I think) that can format as you want and copy your old files.

[Andy Hall]

No it isn't.

Sample of how many?

[cj]

HI Maxtor also do software to format & partition new drives just goto maxtor.com enter your new drive details and you can download the software for free it even comes in an iso file that you burn straight to a cd and it will boot and run from this cd independant of windows .

HTH

CJ

[Steve]

It is bollocks.I've always used Maxtors in all my builds, About 10 up till now. Never had a failure, touch wood. Steve.

[Andy Hall]

Yes, this is not a meaningful quantity.

I'm talking of a sample of several hundred over a period of time. In comparison with other brands, Maxtor have proved to be very poor.

[Lobster]

Yes I'd read about slipstreaming but my current disk is indeed Very Full... how much space would I need to free up in order to ultimately create a new install CD?

Ta David