Rebuilt

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An older friend of mine just ordered one of the Dell 2350 packages. XP comes loaded on it. He wants to partition his 30 gig hd into 3 different drives. He's settled on a 9,10, and 11 gig split. I've used fdisk for 98 quite a bit, could almost recite the Radified Guide myself.I'm still using 98SE and don't know a thing about XP. I went to Bootdisk.com and looked at the boot floppy download, it spans 3 floppies. My question is, is there a disk partitioning utility on the XP Disc? Does it work like the fat 32 utility on 98? I'm pretty comfortable with the MS version of Fdisk, I'm hoping the XP version is at least comparable. I understand that XP arlready has the boot instructions on it, so the pc boots directly from the CD during setup, if configured in BIOS. I want to take the new dell, re-partition it like my friend wants,re-format the new partitions, then do a new install from the Dell restore CD.Tips? Sites I need to look at? Screwups I can or should avoid? Thanks.

A man is just about as happy as he makes up his mind to be. Abe Lincoln
 

psykoikonov

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This only works if you're going to reinstall OS (win XP). Boot off CD and at first prompt press esc. (yes esc.). Alot of others have had problems with this. Simply read each ALL the options as you go through and it'll be fine, if not you could be in for a world of hurt (ie. do it again). Once in the OS you'll have to format the other 2 partitions (right mouse click part. -> format) as XP will only do C: on the install. BTW the boot disks for XP are 6 in total.

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DaveP

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Is it a Windows CD, or a Dell recovery CD? If it's a windows CD, you can build new partitions, during the setup. If it's a recovery CD, you will probably need something like a Partition Magic program , or something similar, to help you with it. As they, (recovery CD's) usually just start, and don't give you many options.

Recovery CD's are the devil!

:smile: Peace comes only after absolute victory :smile:
 

Rebuilt

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don't know if it's a Windows CD or a Dell recovery CD. He just ordered it yesterday and I'm trying to get my little ducks in a row b4 it gets here. I really suspect it's a restore CD, since XP comes preloaded on the unit. What If I just format everything fat 32 and install XP as a fat 32 file system? I've heard some guys actually prefer to run XP as fat 32. I hear that ntfs is much more stable. I did get another disk partitioning utility. It's called AEfdisk. It looks like it will do just what I need. I really don't know squat about XP. I've finally gotten proficient at 98SE

A man is just about as happy as he makes up his mind to be. Abe Lincoln
 

khha4113

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Get Partition Magic 8.0 if you don't want to loose data or reinstall WinXP.

:smile: Good or Bad have no meaning at all, depends on what your point of view is.
 

folken

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why not just use the disk managment utility on windows xp? I don't know if home edition has it but I know pro does.
it can be found by going to control panel>administrative tools>computer management>disk management
use that instead of partition magic if you have xp pro. partition magic will probably screw up things and you can't uninstall it.
 

khha4113

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You can only use XP's Disk Management on partitions others than the one that contains OS. Also, its functions is limited. For example, it can convert your drive from FAT32 to NTFS but cannot reverse it (not without destroying existing data).
I recommended Partition Magic since it can do that faster and much better job (especially in his case since if I'm correct, he wants to partition the drive that already has WinXP on it), and it also is a bootable CD can work in DOS mode if you have a new HD and want to partition and format. I have been using it to partition, format and convert on many HDs without problem.

:smile: Good or Bad have no meaning at all, depends on what your point of view is.