Windows XP Partitions and 250 gb hard drive

Greetings,

I got a new IDE hard drive, sized 250 gb. Windows XP does not recognize its real size, showing only 127 gb: I cant use more than this, which is quite annoying since I payed for almost exactly double that space.
I thought the hard drive could be partinioned from Windows XP even if it was not empty and formatted, so I filled it with files. Even worse, it's my primary hard drive now because the old hard disk was damaged and I had to install the OS on the new one. So, I really can't format it now. I can't find a way to resize and manage the partitions (or, even better, to show XP the real size of the drive) from the Windows disk manager program.
Is there a way within Windows XP to solve this? Or any other program you can suggest me? I downloaded a pair of partition managers from Majorgeeks but they are .iso to use with a boot cdrom, and I'm afraid they will require to delete datas from the hard disk if I use them for partitioning..

My OS is Windows XP Professional, no SP installed.

Thanks in advance,

Zack

 

XP by itself only supports up to 130 Gigs. If you were to installl XP sp2, then you can increase this limiter to the max.

Personally, I use a 3rd party tool to MAKE SURE that I have the full benefits of my HDD. Symantec Partition Magic.