Partitioning New Hard Drive

On 5/9/12 12:47 PM, Wesley wrote:

Dell Dimension E521 Win XP SP3

I did no research on your computer so what I write here may be in error.

I've just cloned my 250 GB HD, Sector by sector, to a new 500 GB HD using a
caddy and EaseUS free. I've removed the old HD and replaced it with the new
one and got it up and running.



When I go to Disk Management for the new HD, I see the following



55 MB FAT Healthy (EISA Configuration), (C:) 228.13 GB NTFS Healthy
(System), 4.64 GB FAT32 Healthy (Unknown Partition), 232.94 GB
Unallocated.



With a little research, I think the 55 MB is for Dell Diagnostics and the
4.64 GB FAT32 partition is a backup of the original OS.

That could be a recovery partition, which Dell and others put on hard
drives in lieu of providing you with recovery CD/DVD's.

My OS has been upgraded to SP3 so is there any point in having this
partition. I tried to do a recovery last year and got a message saying it
was the wrong OS.

When you tried the recovery, did you select a destructive recovery, if
that's an option, which would wipe out your drive?

What I would like to do is delete the 4.64 GB partition and allocate the
freed up space plus the 232.94 unallocated portion of the new HD to drive C.
When I right click on the 232.94 unallocated GB and start the Partition
Wizard I get the option of creating a Primary Partition or an Extended
Partition. Which option should I choose to make all the space part of the
C: drive and will the new partition be NTFS?

I go against the crowd in this aspect. I make C:\ about twice the size
needed by the OS and any installed software. I do not store any data on
the C:\ drive. I take the remaining space on a hard drive and partition
into a separate drive D:\. I redirect My Documents to D:\.

I store absolutely everything I create, copy, download (I never put
files in the default Download folder.), etc. on D:\.

Why? If something happens to your XP installation that requires a
repair/reinstall of XP, one of the first things you have to do is deal
with your data you do not want to lose. By storing all your data on
D:\, or some other storage medium, that step is already done. Just
reinstall XP and get on with your life. <grin> Just watch out for the
occasional software that doesn't allow you choose where your data is
saved. My original Garmin software does that, but I no longer use the
Garmin software.


Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 12.0
Thunderbird 12.0.1
LibreOffice 3.5.2.2

"Ken Springer" wrote in message
news:joeg7k$l8o$

On 5/9/12 12:47 PM, Wesley wrote:

Dell Dimension E521 Win XP SP3

I did no research on your computer so what I write here may be in error.

I've just cloned my 250 GB HD, Sector by sector, to a new 500 GB HD using
a
caddy and EaseUS free. I've removed the old HD and replaced it with the
new
one and got it up and running.



When I go to Disk Management for the new HD, I see the following



55 MB FAT Healthy (EISA Configuration), (C:) 228.13 GB NTFS Healthy
(System), 4.64 GB FAT32 Healthy (Unknown Partition), 232.94 GB
Unallocated.



With a little research, I think the 55 MB is for Dell Diagnostics and the
4.64 GB FAT32 partition is a backup of the original OS.

That could be a recovery partition, which Dell and others put on hard
drives in lieu of providing you with recovery CD/DVD's.

My OS has been upgraded to SP3 so is there any point in having this
partition. I tried to do a recovery last year and got a message saying
it
was the wrong OS.

When you tried the recovery, did you select a destructive recovery, if
that's an option, which would wipe out your drive?

What I would like to do is delete the 4.64 GB partition and allocate the
freed up space plus the 232.94 unallocated portion of the new HD to drive
C.
When I right click on the 232.94 unallocated GB and start the Partition
Wizard I get the option of creating a Primary Partition or an Extended
Partition. Which option should I choose to make all the space part of
the
C: drive and will the new partition be NTFS?

I go against the crowd in this aspect. I make C:\ about twice the size
needed by the OS and any installed software. I do not store any data on
the C:\ drive. I take the remaining space on a hard drive and partition
into a separate drive D:\. I redirect My Documents to D:\.

I store absolutely everything I create, copy, download (I never put files
in the default Download folder.), etc. on D:\.

Why? If something happens to your XP installation that requires a
repair/reinstall of XP, one of the first things you have to do is deal
with your data you do not want to lose. By storing all your data on D:\,
or some other storage medium, that step is already done. Just reinstall
XP and get on with your life. <grin> Just watch out for the occasional
software that doesn't allow you choose where your data is saved. My
original Garmin software does that, but I no longer use the Garmin
software.


Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 12.0
Thunderbird 12.0.1
LibreOffice 3.5.2.2

Thanks for the quick reply. What I eventually intend is to put the old HD
back in the PC and use it for backups. I.E. have two HD's.

Is it safe to delete the original backup OS amd partition the whole of the
new HD as C: and how do I do this? I will still have a copy of the
reinstall partition on othe old HD

Wesley wrote:

Dell Dimension E521 Win XP SP3



I've just cloned my 250 GB HD, Sector by sector, to a new 500 GB HD using
a
caddy and EaseUS free. I've removed the old HD and replaced it with the
new
one and got it up and running.



When I go to Disk Management for the new HD, I see the following



55 MB FAT Healthy (EISA Configuration), (C:) 228.13 GB NTFS Healthy
(System), 4.64 GB FAT32 Healthy (Unknown Partition), 232.94 GB
Unallocated.



With a little research, I think the 55 MB is for Dell Diagnostics and the
4.64 GB FAT32 partition is a backup of the original OS.



My OS has been upgraded to SP3 so is there any point in having this
partition. I tried to do a recovery last year and got a message saying it
was the wrong OS.



What I would like to do is delete the 4.64 GB partition and allocate the
freed up space plus the 232.94 unallocated portion of the new HD to drive
C.
When I right click on the 232.94 unallocated GB and start the Partition
Wizard I get the option of creating a Primary Partition or an Extended
Partition. Which option should I choose to make all the space part of the
C: drive and will the new partition be NTFS?

I have a Dell also. I'd advise against doing this, as the Dell BIOS boot up
procedure expects your OS to be on a certain partition number that will be
different IF you delete either of those two hidden Dell partitions (so you
wouldn't be able to boot up again).

Yes, it is possible to delete them - IF you know how to properly reconfigure
boot.ini (etc) (which I don't, so I won't mess with it). That 4.64 GB
"loss" is really pretty inconsequential, especially when you consider the
risks you'd be taking (by deleting that partition and no longer being able
to boot up again).

On 5/9/12 1:40 PM, Wesley wrote:

<snip>

Thanks for the quick reply.

You're welcome.

What I eventually intend is to put the old HD
back in the PC and use it for backups. I.E. have two HD's.

Depending on what you mean by "backup" and what/how you do it, I would
do something different than it appears you want to do.

Is it safe to delete the original backup OS amd partition the whole of the
new HD as C: and how do I do this? I will still have a copy of the
reinstall partition on othe old HD

For the sake of our discussion, I will assume (bad, bad word! LOL) the
partition you refer to as the "original backup OS" is a recovery partition.

Define "safe". <grin> If you have no system Cd's to restore your
computer, that will work with your product id, how would you reinstall
XP? If you never, ever need to have that backup OS, delete it. Bill in
Co is correct that the BIOS or whatever controls the recovery process
will probably expect the recovery data to be in a certain partition,
which is why I leave that partition alone and never change the drive
letter for it. My HP with Win7 has a recovery partition, but the drive
is full of bad sectors in that partition, so it's useless. But, it's a
1TB drive, and I don't need the extra space.

Your plan assumes the original hard drive has no errors in the XP
installation, too.

I've only owned one computer with a recovery partition, the HP I
mentioned, and to get it up and running, I had to buy recovery DVDs.
The DVDs restored the hard drive to the way it came out of the box,
recovery partition and all. Obviously, no write verify.

I set my computers up like "the old days", where storage space is at a
premium, and it was assumed the hard drive(s) would fail fairly soon. I
still use those theories/practices for data storage. I don't put data
on the primary/boot drive without an ongoing backup plan for that data.

If you would like the details of what I do, and would do if your
computer was mine, feel free to send me an email. It's off topic for
your question. :-)

Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 12.0
Thunderbird 12.0.1
LibreOffice 3.5.2.2

On Wed, 09 May 2012 14:27:03 -0600, Ken Springer
wrote:

For the sake of our discussion, I will assume (bad, bad word! LOL)

Almost everyone thinks "assume" is a bad bad word. But I completely
disagree. There's nothing wrong with assuming all sorts of things.
Almost everything you do in life in based on assumptions. When you
walk across the street when you have a green light, you assume that
the cars with the red light will stop and not run you over. When you
fly in an airplane, you assume that there is no terrorist on the plane
who will blow it up. When you make love with your wife, you assume
that she hasn't caught AIDS from someone else. Etc, etc. etc.

Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP