installing windows tomorrow, what to do first?

[unwashed potato!]

well should be getting a new hard drive tomorrow as my last went kaboom. will be starting windows again and just want to see what people think i should do before i install windows.

I will be installing windows on this hard drive (500gb) and then the replacement one will come in weeks to come which i might sell or keep as a second hard drive (250gb)

so what can people reccomend? whats this partition thing i hear so much about? is it worth doing as i may have 2 hard drives? i'd like to learn how to do it anyway so possibly i could give it ago but need it explaining to me.

any other suggestions before i go ahead?

thanks

 

[swinnie]

Well from the post above you are having one hard drive so Partitioning your hard drive will be a good idea.

If you have a usable system at the moment you can partition the drive before you start but only if you are using an XP Installation Disk, not a recovery CD that was given to you by a manufacturer like Dell.

Go to the Useful Freeware Utilites and find 'Partition/HDD Backup/Management' in the list and read the reviews of the partition software and use that to partition your drive and follow guidelines.

Not sure on anything else as I have two drives, one for my system and apps and then another for data.

hope this helps

 

[unwashed potato!]

thanks for the quick reply. so you saying that i can add and delete partitions later on if i need them, and as i use 2 hard drives i don't atm?

if i can add partitions later then i think i will do this instead as it seems rather easy to learn.

what sort of size partition qwould be reccomened anyway for the 500gb drive?

 

[DAVEM]

well should be getting a new hard drive tomorrow as my last went kaboom. will be starting windows again and just want to see what people think i should do before i install windows.

I will be installing windows on this hard drive (500gb) and then the replacement one will come in weeks to come which i might sell or keep as a second hard drive (250gb)

so what can people reccomend? whats this partition thing i hear so much about? is it worth doing as i may have 2 hard drives? i'd like to learn how to do it anyway so possibly i could give it ago but need it explaining to me.

any other suggestions before i go ahead?

thanks

Depending on the BIOS support your motherboad has for hard drives, you may well find that windows will recognise it as a much smaller size (say 300GB).

Once you have installed windows you will need to go to "CONTROL PANEL" -> "ADMINISTRATIVE SETTINGS" -> "COMPUTER MANAGEMENT".

Click on the storage setting, then select your new hard drive. You'll see a unformatted segment. Right click on that segment and format it, you will give it a letter.

So you'll have a C drive and a new drive. So it looks like you have two drives, but essentially they are two partitions on the same disk. But for all intents and purposes they act as two seperate drives.

Personally I like to have 3 partitions, on being roughly 40 GB for windows alone, one being 150 GB for applications and work files, and one being around 300 GB for media files.

Also I'm sure I dont have to point out that a hard disk that is 500GB, will not give you 500GB of actual storage space. The formatting proceedure requires space itself (essentially an area of the disk is used to index the data, so the operating system looks at this area first which tells the OS where the data you are trying to access is physically located).

Davem

 

[unwashed potato!]

Depending on the BIOS support your motherboad has for hard drives, you may well find that windows will recognise it as a much smaller size (say 300GB).

you saying that the 500gb without diong anything to it, my motherboard may end up reading as smaller then it is, e.g. 300gb? if so is the 500gb still usable just being shown as only say 300gb or is it only able to use 300gbs worth?

my motherboard is a asus A8R-MVP, anyclues as to whether this will read the 500gb fine?

is it better to partition before or after isntalling windows? is there a real need for partitioning or is a sort of geeky thing to do that just a tiny bit more secure?

 

[DAVEM]

My post tells you how to get all the 500 GB working if your BIOS only supports a smaller value (the simplist way). It's all usabe put will appear as two drives as apposed to one using this method.

You will have to partition the drive as part of the Windows set up proceedure, so IMO you may as well let windows do it for you.

Partitions aren't geeky, and is common practice in the real world.

D

 

[Tripnologist]

When I had only a single drive, I just did two partitions. One for Windows and applications and one for everything I wanted to keep (music, vids, etc.). That way, whenever I needed to reinstall windows, I wouldn't have to worry about backing up my music etc.

EDIT: btw, I can't see your mobo not seeing the full size of the drive.