Solved: Partitioned my HD when I installed windows, lost 490gb.

Windows was supposed to be on the 10 gb partition, but after I partitioned, it went ahead and installed windows right away. well its on it installed windows on the partition alright.... But the other 490gb of my hard drive is nowhere to be seen, at all. Ummmm.... so where is it?

 

10 is a really small partition for XP. You may want to start over while you are at the beginning. With a drive that large, 50 would be more reasonable.

If you don't want to do that, at least create a Program Files folder in another partition and start installing programs there, or you will be out of space quickly.

For the missing space, right-click My Computer > Manage > Disk Management.

Right-click the empty space and partition and format.

 

Did you look in Drive Management? If you created one single 10GB partition, then of course that's all you see in My Computer. You have to create the other 490GB partition using Windows or Partition Magic or Disk Directory or other such utility.

10GB is really small for a system partition, however. You may want to start over while you can or use your partition utility of choice.

 

Ok about the reformatting..

I have bios set to boot cd first, then hd, and my windows cd is in the drive. Why is it completely passing the cd and going straight to windows?

Hell, I even tried removing my harddrive from the boot list so just the cd was there, and it still loaded windows.

 

Better yet can I combine the two? or resize the first?
Im googling it but all I can come up with is "use partition magic!"
I dont have $70 to spend on that

 

You can combine them, but not with any tools that come with XP. You'd need a partitioning tool for that.

It booted from the CD OK for the installation and now it won't? Maybe it is going too fast to see the "Press Any Key..." message. Try tapping the spacebar while booting.

 

There are some free tools you can try. Wouldn't hurt at this point because you don't have anything to lose on the drive, right?

Try Parted Magic or GParted. You'll need to burn the iso's to CD.

Partitioning Tools-->

Free:

Gparted LiveCD
Parted Magic
XP Recovery Console CD image (Create and delete partitions with diskpart.exe)
Partition Logic
Ranish Partition Manager
Cute Partition Manager

Shareware:

Paragon Partition Manager
Paragon Hard Disk Manager
Terabyte BootIt NG
Acronis Disk Director
V-Com (Avanquest) Partition Commander
EASEUS Partition Manager
7Tools Partition Manager
Spotmau Partition Genius

 

A quick piece of advice: When you get ready to format, if you are pretty sure the drive is OK, use the Quick format or you will be waiting an hour with a drive that large. If you already started it, cancel and start over with the quick one.