Hard Drive Issue

[Andrewsmonkey]

Recently built a new machine, and put a 320gig hardrive in it and installed winxp, the 320 being the only hardrive in it. My problem is that my computer only is able to use 29.3gigs (thats how much free space it reads in the "my computer" shortcut thing). Thinking back to when I was first putting every thing together I remeber something asking me how much memory to use, but dont recall what I was doing at the time.

So anyways I was wondering how to open up all 320, or rather where to look because when I go to my bios menu I can see my hardrive, and it sees all 320gigs but I have no options in which to change anything.

Should I just backup and reformat?

 

[eyeCpc]

You only partitioned and formatted about 30gb in total leaving the rest of the drive as simply empty unallocated drive space. You likely be better off starting over again since expanding the existing primary out from the 29.3gb you are seeing there to the roughly 298.0232238769531gb you should be seeing less installation and drive space reserved for the paging file may see problems.

You can try using a 3rd party drive tool like GParted live if you have had some experience in partitioning and formatting drives to expand outward.

 

[Nukem]

or you can simple go into computer management and create a partition out of what's left.

Start/Settings/Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management

A new window will pop up and under storage click the Disk management. On the right you will see all your drives.. if one is black and says unallocated, then you all you need to do is right click on it and create partition... from there follow the steps.

 

[eyeCpc]

or you can simple go into computer management and create a partition out of what's left.

Start/Settings/Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management

A new window will pop up and under storage click the Disk management. On the right you will see all your drives.. if one is black and says unallocated, then you all you need to do is right click on it and create partition... from there follow the steps.

And the problem with that being Andrewsmonkey being limited to 29.3gb for the main OS primary doing things that way. I''m sure a bit more drive space is the thing wanted there.

For partitioning and resizing existing partitions many keep finding out that the free Linux tool will correct any goofs made while using the XP installer's own partitioning tool when not using the total amount displayed. The free tool is an iso disk image you burn onto a blank cd-r you boot from just you did with the XP disk. SourceForge.net: GParted: Files

The documentation and some screenshots are seen at GPARTED DOCUMENTATION - GENERALITIES

 

[Nukem]

What he wrote is open to interpretation, so you explained it one way, and I, another... The user will have to decide how he wants to do given the suggestions he is provided.

 

[Andrewsmonkey]

You both have my thanks I was very much in the dark, I had come across what eye, was saying when searching for help with my problem, but didn't think that I had some how partitioned on accident. Since as eye said that I would need some sort of experience on partitioning in order to use Gparted, I think I'm going to take nukem's easy way out. Trying it now...

 

[Andrewsmonkey]

Awesome, I created a partition out of the rest of the space just by simply clicking next, its formatting now, thank you both for your help.

 

[eyeCpc]

What he wrote is open to interpretation, so you explained it one way, and I, another... The user will have to decide how he wants to do given the suggestions he is provided.

Some experienced gamers will tend to use a small OS partition and custom install games and other programs to another partition. But for someone rather new that space is likely to be filled too fast resulting in "out of memory" type errors coming up. That's why I have to caution on that.

You both have my thanks I was very much in the dark, I had come across what eye, was saying when searching for help with my problem, but didn't think that I had some how partitioned on accident. Since as eye said that I would need some sort of experience on partitioning in order to use Gparted, I think I'm going to take nukem's easy way out. Trying it now...

"Experience is the best teacher" is one phrase often heard. Until you are a bit more confident on partitioning you can try resizing on the new second partition with GParted since that won't have any effect on the Windows primary. Some extra screens on GParted can be looked over at GParted -- Screenshots