I had bought an 80gb hard drive about a year ago. Then I had only put windows xp on half of it( 40gb). I would like to use the other half of the hard drive now. How do I go about adding windows xp to the other half, now that there are numerous documents on the first half of the hard drive. when i do so, is it a possibility any information could be lost. Thanks.
Hi hitwriter,
Okay, we'll bite - why did you partition it 50:50 to begin with, and what did you do with the 50% remaining blank (unclaimed) space?
The only reason to do this would be if you desired one (or two) FAT32 partitions instead of one 80GB partition, which would have to be NTFS.
Why are you not using the other half of the hard drive now?
Regards
At first, I was going to put windows xp on both portions of hard drive. I never got around to doing it. I wanted my music to be on a different partition from other parts, like word processing, etc, just in case a virus got on the computer, and I had to reinstall xp, I wouldn't loose my music. But now, I need the other half of the drive, is there any way to install xp on the other half without messing up what's already there, or should I just reinstall xp on the whole 80 gb hard drive.
I was not understanding you, but it seems that you associate 'putting Windows on' with using the harddisk space.
I have multiple harddisks with multiple partitions, and only one installation of Windows.
If you have a 40GB partition C:\ you can simply create the other 40GB partition D:\ (or this might become E:\ if CDRom has already claimed D:\ - doesn't matter) and just use the space for whatever you wish :^)
Go to Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management and maximize the screen.
Any blank unpartitioned space will show at the bottom, where your physical harddisks are displayed.
Do you see your 80GB? How does it look - half used?
Harddisks must be partitioned then formatted with a filesystem!
Format any unclaimed space, and Windows will assign it a Logical Drive letter (E:\ or whatever) and welcome it into your system.
The new drive will now appear at the top of Disk Management where the logical drives are displayed (and in Windows Explorer too) ready for use.
Don't worry; your problem is so easy it's not really a problem!
I hope you are better musician than computer tech, LoL ;^)
The two disciplines didn't use to be related, but these days a musician needs a PC I s'pose...
Anyway I hope this helps, let us know how you get along.
L8R
Thanks for your help. I am a much better musician, than techie!!:)
I see the unallocated space available. when i began to format it, it wants to used an ntfs file, Fat32 isn't even an option. Is that ok. Why isn't fat 32 showing?
the music software I am using is giving me problems. It was working just 2 weeks earlier, now it is not working. I'm thinking possibly some audio codecs might be inteferring. When I format the unused space on the hard drive, if a virus is on a of hard drive. Will it affect b of hard drive. I have run virus scan using avg, it has found no viruses. Once this drive is partitioned I am going to re install the music software. thanks for your help!!!!!!!
