[blkelly]

I am not knowledgeable regarding the hardrive of computers. And I have a rather old computer that has Window XP Home Ed. on it. The computer seems to have very little space - I am constantly deleting files, programs, etc. just to do the most simple things like MS Word, Excel, Norton, AOL, etc. I can't hardly load any pictures on because they take so much space. I looked under Control Panal/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management and it is showing that on my C: drive where all my programs are there is 7.87 GB NTFS which is healthy and that there is another 48.93 GB of unallocated space. Under the title Disk O it states Basic 55.90 GB. I'm assuming this means that my computer has 55.90 GB of space to use but I am only using 7.87 of it. How can I access the 48.93 GB of unallocated space? I'm very frustrated! Any help you can give is appreciated.

[Courtneyc]

In My Computer/Windows Explorer, do you have a Drive O:? That's the rest of the space. The "Basic" is because you can have two types of drives in XP, Basic and Dynamic. Dynamic allows you to change the partition size of the drive on the fly, but it doesn't work on the drive with the operating system. That can only be Basic.

I'm afraid, the only way to fix your problem is to wipe it, repartition the drive and install from scratch.

Courtney sends....

[JohnWill]

You can use something like Acronis Disk Director or Norton Partition Magic to expand the partition. There's really no reason to start from scratch, that's an extreme measure.

[blkelly]

In My Computer/Windows Explorer I do not have a Drive O - I have a Drive A (3 1/2 floppy), Drive C (Local Disk), Drive D (CD Drive), Drive E (DVD Drive) and that's it.

[batharoy]

Try right clicking on the unallocated portion and see if a format option pops up, if so try formating that portion only.

[John_Keller]

You are looking at the wrong place you have to right click on the my computer icon which is on your desktop, go to manage, then click on storage, then disk management(local) there you will have your disk 0.

[batharoy]

Two different ways of getting to the same place.
Both ways will work.

[DoubleHelix]

Allocating the space with Windows will create another drive letter on which to store data, but you'll still have space problems with only an 8GB main partition. If you want to make that partition larger or combine both partitions, you'll need to use a separate utility such as the one JohnWill named in his post.