Hard Drive Question

**2monsters** · January 27th, 2008, 09:30 PM

Ok Guys! So i put together my first build in a long while. Everything went together rather successfully except for 1 little dilema. When i installed the OS i formatted and then went into partition setup. I allowed for 8Gb for the OS,but i dont see the rest of the 250 GB hard drive. The 8 GB is labeled C: it is an FAT partition. Somewhere i missed something. Please help!

System specs:
IntelQ6600
Asus P5NE SLI
4GB Geil Skill DDR2 800
Artic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
Seagate Barracuda 250 GB HD
700 Watt OCZ GameXstream
Windows XP Pro

**Atomic Rooster** · January 27th, 2008, 09:34 PM

Does the rest of the drive show up in computer management? If so, you can format it from there. Have you installed SP2?

**2monsters** · January 27th, 2008, 09:43 PM

This is what i see in device manager:
Cpacity:238373 MB
Unallocated:229473MB

Volumes C: 9208MB

**Atomic Rooster** · January 27th, 2008, 10:03 PM

You should be able to format the unallocated space and create another partition. Go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management. You can right click the unallocated space to format and create a partition.

**2monsters** · January 27th, 2008, 10:21 PM

Ok It says create primary or extended partition. Which one?

**2monsters** · January 27th, 2008, 10:41 PM

Thanx Rooster! I Got it

**Atomic Rooster** · January 27th, 2008, 11:02 PM

Cool.

**RamonGTP** · January 27th, 2008, 11:31 PM

The question still remains... Why in the world would you format using FAT instead of NTFS for your boot partition???

**2monsters** · January 28th, 2008, 12:22 AM

Originally Posted by RamonGTP

The question still remains... Why in the world would you format using FAT instead of NTFS for your boot partition???

Like i said its been a long time since i put a rig together. Last time i did this was a windows 98 OS. My brain cramped on me. Give me more info Ramon

**RamonGTP** · January 28th, 2008, 12:30 AM

Here is a chart for some of the characteristics between NTFS and FAT

http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm

**Atomic Rooster** · January 28th, 2008, 12:36 AM

Here's a page from Microsoft on how to convert a FAT partition to NTFS: How to Use Convert.exe to Convert a Partition to the NTFS File System.

**2monsters** · January 28th, 2008, 12:53 AM

Ok done! So both volumes should be NTFS correct?

**Atomic Rooster** · January 28th, 2008, 01:36 AM

Yuppers

**zepper** · January 28th, 2008, 11:43 AM

I would have made some of the space in the extended as FAT-32 so it would be easier to share files with other OSes, but if you can't see past Windwoes, I guess it doesn't matter.

.bh.

**#43 fan** · January 28th, 2008, 12:46 PM

Originally Posted by zepper

I would have made some of the space in the extended as FAT-32 so it would be easier to share files with other OSes, but if you can't see past Windwoes, I guess it doesn't matter.

.bh.

Do you mean Linux, or other versions of Windows (older)?
If it's Linux, now Linux can read and write on NTFS, last I checked.