New drive partition after XP upgrade?

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (More info?)

I just upgraded from Windows ME to XP Home Edition. Previously I had a
decent amount of disk space, but now my disk is nearly full and there is a
new drive, drive E, that showed up after the upgrade. What's this about?
How can I get my disk space back, or can I?

Also, and this may be realted to the disk space, there is a constant ticking
or accessing of the drive while I am on my computer. This, too, has been
since the upgrade. Any ideas?

 

[john]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (More info?)

ComputerChallenged wrote:

> I just upgraded from Windows ME to XP Home Edition. Previously I had a
> decent amount of disk space, but now my disk is nearly full and there is a
> new drive, drive E, that showed up after the upgrade. What's this about?
> How can I get my disk space back, or can I?
>
> Also, and this may be realted to the disk space, there is a constant ticking
> or accessing of the drive while I am on my computer. This, too, has been
> since the upgrade. Any ideas?

XP takes up a lot of hard drive realestate and keeps your drive *very*
busy in its default state. The extra partition is anyone's guess as you
give no information as to what else you did. Just a guess - are sure you
upgraded and didn't do a new install on that extra partition that showed up?

John

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (More info?)

"John" wrote:

> ComputerChallenged wrote:
>
> > I just upgraded from Windows ME to XP Home Edition. Previously I had a
> > decent amount of disk space, but now my disk is nearly full and there is a
> > new drive, drive E, that showed up after the upgrade. What's this about?
> > How can I get my disk space back, or can I?
> >
> > Also, and this may be realted to the disk space, there is a constant ticking
> > or accessing of the drive while I am on my computer. This, too, has been
> > since the upgrade. Any ideas?
>
> XP takes up a lot of hard drive realestate and keeps your drive *very*
> busy in its default state. The extra partition is anyone's guess as you
> give no information as to what else you did. Just a guess - are sure you
> upgraded and didn't do a new install on that extra partition that showed up?
>
> John
>

Thank you for your reply. It was an upgrade and not a new install. This
was done on my laptop. A drive E with 2 GB of space is now showing. It
doesn't appear to have anything in it, but I don't want to try to remove the
partition if it is needed. I have not ever partitioned my drive in the past.
I was reading somewhere on Microsoft that XP has done this before when it
thought there was a zip dirve or something? *shrug*

 

[chelsea]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (More info?)

Partitions don't just appear! but its hard to see how a simple upgrade can
setup one. There is an option in the installation script that allows WinXP
to be installed in any unformatted space on your hard disk and that would
create a new partition. Anyhow you need to find out if there is anything on
drive E. Go to Explorer/Tools/Folder options select the view tab and in the
long list make sure the show hidden files radio button is on, show hidden
files and folders check box is checked and hide protected operating system
files checkbox is unchecked. Now look at drive E: there will probably be a
Recycle bin entry and possibly a pagefile.sys. If you still want to get the
hard disk space back you will need something like Partition Magic or Acronis
Disk Director both of which will allow the space on the extra partition to
be reallocated. If your gard disk is constantly being paged then you almost
certainly need more memory. 500Mb of ram will usually make Windows happy

Chelsea

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (More info?)

ComputerChallenged <ComputerChallenged@discussions.microsoft.com>
wrote:

>Thank you for your reply. It was an upgrade and not a new install. This
>was done on my laptop. A drive E with 2 GB of space is now showing. It
>doesn't appear to have anything in it, but I don't want to try to remove the
>partition if it is needed. I have not ever partitioned my drive in the past.
> I was reading somewhere on Microsoft that XP has done this before when it
>thought there was a zip dirve or something? *shrug*

Is there any data in that new partition?

It could be a "hidden" System Recovery partition put there by the
laptop manufacturer at the factory. If so then this will contain an
exact image of your computer's original Windows and the factory
preinstalled apps, just as it was when the laptop left the factory.

XP will often detect these partitions and give them a drive letter
even though they are technically "hidden" and are not visible to
earlier versions of Windows such as Windows 98 or Windows Me.

Good luck.


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm