Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with WindowsXP and partition

Maybe this partitioning scheme wasn't as clever as I thought ...

Nelsormensch — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 10:30:54 -0800

Is it possible to reinstall Windows XP on a small partition (~20 GB) of a single 300 GB hard drive? When I installed Windows XP originally, I made a small partition for Windows and left the rest of the disc unpartitioned. After installing SP2 (when Windows can detect hard drives greater than 127 GB), I partitioned the rest of the 300 GB hard drive for everything unrelated to the OS. I did this to allow Windows to be reinstalled without having to worry about backing up and restoring hundreds of GB of personal data.

However, today when pondering an OS reinstall, I realized that the installer on the Windows XP disc can't correctly handle HDs greater than 127 GB. It doesn't detect my HD being one 20 GB partition and one 280 GB partition. Instead it just sees one 127 GB partition of an unknown type. Obviously this means I can't just nuke the Windows partition and reinstall the OS by itself.

Aside from backing up the 280 GB partition and restoring it after reinstall up to SP2, is there any way to reinstall Windows XP without affecting the other partition?

Combining and changing partitions

punishinglemur — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 11:40:08 -0800

I just received a new Acer laptop. The hard drive is 100GB, but it arrived divided into two partitions. According to the Windows XP Professional disk management window, the drive is divided as follows ... PQSERVICE: 2.25GB FAT32
ACER (C:): 45.26GB FAT32 [System]
ACERDATA (D:): 45.65GB FAT32

I want to combine the ACER and ACERDATA partitions, and then convert to NTFS. The ACERDATA partition appears to contain nothing more than a handful of system restore point folders. How can I do this?

Setting up my new HDD

jewishbuddha — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 06:00:06 -0800

What should I do with my new hard drive? I just got a new 80gb drive for my laptop that I'm planning to install in the next few days, and I'm looking for advice on how to set it up. Should I partition? Do you have a good method of organizing/managing your files? Recommended disk utilities? Back-up or maintenance routines?

If it helps, I currently have about 25gb on the 30gb drive I'm replacing. It's 14gb of music, 1.5gb of pictures, another gig or so of misc. documents. The rest is windows bloat and applications. One of the motivations for the new drive is to have storage for higher res pictures. I'm a student (for another month!) and my future employer will be providing me a new computer, so this is just for personal use.

I'm running XP Pro on a Dell Latitude x300. I'll be keeping the 30gb drive in a USB enclosure and can use it for back-ups, emergency booting, etc.

I got some good tips in these threads, but would like to hear more. I figure if I'm starting with a clean slate, now is a good time to pick up some good habits.

Problems with GRUB and dual-booting

SpecialK — Tue, 12 Oct 2004 16:15:38 -0800

Linux Filter: Had to re-install XP on a dual-boot machine because I borked it. It overwrote the MBR, where Grub was installed. How do I get GRUB back on the computer, and seeing my linux partition?

Windows XP

drezdn — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 13:28:27 -0800

Windows XP question... My parents computer is set up that most items are stored on a 20 GB harddrive (or possibly a partition- listed as c:) while they have 100 GB available on d:... When I install software, is it perfectly acceptable to run it off the D drive, and is there a way to switch the set up so most items save to the d drive? And yes, I realize there is probably a simple solution that I've been unable to find.