Hard drive strange capacity

I have a packard bell c series notebook.

I've not really used it for a while and before I stopped using it I installed xp pro.

I've now went back to it and noticed that the 2 hard drives (c: and some other backup drive) are showing weird capactities.

I seem to remember when I first got it that the c: drive told me there was say 30gig of space.

That was fine, but now it says it's only 4gig, but the backup drive holds around 26gig. I've not done anything physically to the laptop but does anyone have any ideas as to why this is?

I'm a hardware novice, as you may already have noticed.

thanks

 

The numbers you've given make it look like you've somehow split a 30GB drive into two partitions: 4GB and 26GB. Other than the fact that you apparently did not intend to do that, I wouldn't have called those numbers weird. They do add up to the total drive capacity you've given us. I'd guess the unplanned partitioning happened during the WinXP install. It doesn't involve any physical changes to the hardware.

Unfortunately, if you've installed WinXP to the 4GB partition, that's not a lot of space for that OS, particularly as most software you install will try to put itself on the same partition as Windows is installed on. If you let that happen, the 4GB partition will fill up pretty quick.

You could either re-install, and make sure you pay close attention to any partitioning options the install process gives you, or you could pick up a partition manager and merge or resize the two partitions so that Windows has the room it needs. For the last, I like Partition Magic as it was before Symantec got ahold of it, but there are others around that will do the job as well, and perhaps at lower cost.

One suggestion: before using any partition manager, make sure your backups are good. Partition managers don't often screw up, but when they do, you may have no choice but to wipe the drive and start again.

 

I have worked with partitions before within Windows and did not need a second party manager. If I recall correctly, go to Run then type in "compmgmt.msc" (without the quotes). On the left, click on "disk management." Within that you can see what the partitions are, delete them, add new ones, combine unpartitioned space, ect. I believe you right click on the graphic of the drive then that will give you some options. I used the "help" function before to combine unallocated space after deleting an unused partition (I don't remember exactly how, it is simple though). What I think you want to do is delete the large partition, then combine the unallocated space, and then make a new, smaller partition as the backup. This can all be done through this. You can also reinstall Windows, but you may not want to do that. Good luck.

 

Sounds promising guys. I've not had a chance to try out the options listed but I will before the weekend. I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks a million.

 

Disk Management will allow you to create, delete, or format partitions, but you can not resize them. He will either need a 3rd party app for that, or repartition his hard drive and reinstall windows.

P.S. You can get directly to Disk Management by typing "diskmgmt.msc" in the run box.

 

But if you delete a partition and then combine the now unallocated space and then proceed to create a new partition of your choice in size, essentially you resized a partition, correct (assuming you don't mind losing that data)? In his case, I don't know what is on that partition, but considering he had a fresh install of windows, it probably is empty.

Also, Wyatt, do you know how to combine unallocated space (after you delete a partition it becomes unallocated space, not auto combined with existing space)? I don't remember how and would like to notate that. Thanks.

 

In order to combine (resize) his partitions, he would have to delete both partitions. (which he wouldn't be able to do since one of the partitions contains the system files) He would have to do that through a 3rd party app at the command line level (like fdisk) or through the Windows installation.

And I don't understand what you are asking here.

 

Cheers folks. I managed to combine the unallocated space using that DELL program extpart.exe. Very simple indeed. Thank you

 

Good. Did it all work out ok? Problem solved?