Installing Windows on a 500 gig hard drive

[Dakken]

I have made several attempts to install windows XP on a hard drive that is 300 gig. Originally I ran into problems because I hadn't installed SP2. Once I installed that, I still couldn't get windows to install with it making a partition that was around 137 gig in size.

I recently purchased a 500 gig hard drive and have been trying to transfer over my installation of Win XP onto the new hard drive. While I have been able to do so, using Clone HD, it still only made a 131 (or so) gig partition, and I couldn't see any of the rest of the hard drive, even with Disk Manager, just to format the remaining 369 gig. Then I went back and formated the hard drive with Partition Magic, and attempted to reinstall Win XP from scratch, but it still told me that it was going to install itself on a 131 (or so) gig partition.

Can Win XP be installed on a partition larger than 131 gig?

I REALLY would prefer to only have a single partition of 500 gig, as I often have problems in the past my C drive getting filled up.

[Rob]

The problem is that your version of Windows XP does not include SP2. It should work to just install Windows XP, then apply SP2. The hard drive should be recognized for its full 500GB size once SP2 is installed.

[Dakken]

First, thanks so much for your reply.

Previously, when I installed Win XP on my 300 gig drive, I had the same problem and after installing SP2, it did recognize the extra space on the drive, but it was unformatted. After I formated it, it was created as a separate partition. What I would like to have is a single partition, that consists of the entire hard drive.

Is there a way to do this so that the partition Win XP is on will include the entire hard drive? Previously, I used Partition Magic to merge the two partitions on the 300 gig drive, which worked for several weeks, but after suffering a severe windows crash (which perhaps was unrelated to the changes made with Partition Magic) the computer would no longer boot and I had trouble fixing the hard drive. I gave the hard drive to a friend who reformatted the hard drive and has been using it without problems on a Linux system.

If I buy a version of Win XP that includes SP2, will it allow me to install windows on a 500 gig partition?

[Rob]

Yes, I think it will.

[Dakken]

Before I go and buy copy of Windows XP with SP2, which is somewhat expensive, I would like to know if there is a way I could install my current copy of windows with one large 500 gig partition, and if so, how would I go about doing it.

[WickedVex]

I currently own a 320 gig HD and I installed XP Pro with SP2 just fine. Just plop in the CD, boot from it, and then just follow the installation directions. I wouldn't see how it would differ for a 500 gig HD.