Windows XP Professional - Disk Management

The Windows XP Professional operating system provides improved disk management.

You can perform most disk-related tasks without shutting down the computer or interrupting users, and most configuration changes take effect immediately. For example, you can create or extend a volume without restarting the computer. You can also add disks without restarting.

Enter disk management in one of the following three ways:

  1. Start > Right Click on My Computer & select manage

    2. OR
  2. Control Panel > Performance & Maintenance > Administrative Tools > Computer Management

    3. OR
  3. Start-Run and enter "diskmgmt.msc" (without the quotes).
Then Select Disk Management from the resulting windows

How to delete a partition or a logical drive

To delete a partition or logical drive:

  1. In the Disk Management window, right-click the partition or logical drive that you want to delete, and then click Delete Partition or Delete Logical Drive.

  2. Click Yes when you are prompted to delete the partition or logical drive. The partition or logical drive is deleted.

Important

  • When you delete a partition or a logical drive, all the data on that partition or logical drive, and the partition or the logical drive, are deleted.

  • You cannot delete the system partition, boot partition, or a partition that contains the active paging (swap) file.

  • You cannot delete an extended partition unless the extended partition is empty. All logical drives in the extended partition must be deleted before you can delete the extended partition.

How to install an additional hard drive using Windows XP Disk Management.

The steps:

  1. Install Hard drive.

  2. Boot into Windows XP.

  3. Open Computer Management and select Disk Management.

  4. initialise the drive.

  5. Partition the drive.

  6. Format the drive.

  7. Assign the drive letter.

  8. Initiate changes.

Opening Disk Management in XP

  1. Right click on My Computer.

  2. Choose Manage (This will open the Computer Management window).

  3. Choose Disk Management under the Storage category.

When the drive is first seen by Disk management it will not be seen in Windows Explorer. For the drive to been seen in Windows Explorer the drive will need to be configured through disk management. XP will normally see the unpartitioned drive when you open disk management and start the wizard for you.

At this point XP will normally launch a wizard to walk you through setting up the drive, but it may be necessary to set it up manually.

The Partition/Conversion Wizard Method

  1. Welcome to the initialise & Convert Wizard Screen - Click Next (to continue).

  2. Select disks to initialise Screen - Select the drive to partition (The new drive) and Click Next.

  3. Select disks to Convert Screen - Not needed for new drives, Click Next.

  4. Completing the initialise & Convert Wizard screen - Action that will be carried out pressing finish, Click Finish.

  5. Once you press finish the drive will be initialised and you will be taken to the Partition Wizard.

Manually initialise

  1. Right click the new drive to initialise it. This prepares the drive to be used with Windows XP.

  2. Once you choose initialise, Select disks to initialise Screen will pop up asking you to confirm which drive to initialise.
    Once a drive is initialised the data on the drive will be erased.

  3. Choose the correct drive and Click Next.
    Windows will usually only display uninitialised drives, but if you have a dual boot system, drives from other operating systems will show up in this list.

  4. Once you choose OK the drive will be initialised for use with Windows XP (It will still not be seen by Windows Explorer).

Partition

Once a drive is initialised for use with Windows XP, a partition option becomes available. This option is not available for drives that do not have free space or for drives that have not been initialised.

Windows XP supports FAT 16 partitions limited to 4 GB (Limited to 2 GB in DOS based operating systems like Windows 9X/Me), FAT 32 partitions which can be created up to a maximum of 32 GB (They can be larger if they were made with Windows 98/Me), and NTFS partitions.

Partition Wizard

  1. Welcome to the New Partition Wizard Screen - Summary Screen, Click Next (to continue).

  2. Select Partition Type Screen - Select the partition you want to create. The options are:
    Primary – This is the normal selection for drives with less than 4 partitions.
    Extended – This is used if the drive is split in to 4 or more partitions.
    Select option and Click Next

  3. Specify Partition Size Screen - Specify partition size in Megabytes - Set the size of the partition (The full drive capacity is the default) and Click Next.

    If the full partition size is not used, right click on the remaining free space once the wizard has completed to partition that space. Repeat the partition wizard until the drive is how you want it.

  4. Assign the drive letter or Path Screen - This allows you to select the drive letter for this partition. If the partition is NTFS, you can mount the drive as a subfolder of an existing NTFS partition. If you want the drive to be d: and it is taken by the CD, you must first move the CD drive letter and restart the partition wizard. Select as appropriate and click Next.

  5. Format Partition Screen - If you choose not to format then you can format later by right clicking on the drive and choosing format. You can choose to format with a file type and allocation unit size. NTFS is the default format type in Windows XP, but FAT32 is popular for users that dual boot between Windows XP and 9X. There is a limit that Windows XP cannot create a partition larger than 32 GB using FAT32. However you can use Windows 98/Me to create a larger partition and use it under Windows XP. Allocation units are usually left at the default unless you know specifically what you want to do with the system. If you are doing video and audio, they tend to use large allocation units because it improves performance with large files, but if you have a lot of small files then those files take up more space on the hard drive. For example, if you set the allocation unit size to 64k, any file, even a 1k file, will use 64k of drive space. Quick format will quickly format the drive, but it skips several verification processes. Select as appropriate and click Next.

  6. Completing the New Partition Wizard Screen - Summary – Allows you one more chance before committing to the changes.

Finished

Once the drive has been initialised, partitioned, and formatted it will display as a healthy drive with the size and type of partition below the volume name and drive letter.
© MAK 2004
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