xp home pre-sp1 on new hard drive

Hi!!

briefly,
Dell dimension 8200
bought a new 250 gig WD HD

want to use this as my primary boot drive with a fresh install of xp on a small partition C/

my Dell OEM XP Home reinstall disc is original...pre service pack 1, and therefore when freshly installed, will not recognize the total size of the hard drive. Bios version of the Dell should be ok to recognize the total size of the drive.

Can I just use the xp install disc to make a 20 G or so partition (of the 137G it does report), install xp, fully update from MS to SP2, and it should then recognize the rest (230G) of the HD, which I can then partition up as I want?

I tried slipstreaming but difficulties slipstreaming Service Packs into OEM versions.

thanks in advance for your thoughts.

 

Just use WD free utility to format & partition your drive anyway you like, then install your OS with your OEM Dell Restore CD, updates etc. on the partiton of your choice, then all will be fine once your done

 

WD Utility is Data Lifeguard Tools, it comes on CD with Retail WD HDDs
If you bought OEM HDD then can download here at MG or WD's web
http://majorgeeks.com/Western_Digital_Data_Lifeguard_Tools_d2855.html

For multiple Partitions go to Disk Setup/Advanced, it's pretty easy to figure out

 

k, thanx Asus. Will try that.

I'm assuming if I'm downloading the utility i will need to burn to cd, boot from cd to access utility, since the HD will have no OS on it yet?

 

I never used the version from MG, I have on Bootable CD already

This might be easier, download the Data Lifeguard Tools 11.2 for DOS, follow directions
http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?cxml=n&pid=999&swid=23

 

grrrr...floppy died awhile back.
see if maybe I can make bootable cd with that DOS file.
think that would be possible?

thanks again Asus.

edit: on second look on the WD site there is a DOS bootable CD version, but appears to be just diagnostics, no formatting.
guess i better look into getting floppy running.