installing a new hard disk

[chrisg147]

Hi.  I have an XP machine, which has a very old noisy 20gb HDD.  I have bought a new faster 250gb drive.  I have installed the new drive as the secondary master then booted up on my old drive.  First I formatted the new drive as a dynamic disk 'simple' type.  I shut down and using a bootable floppy downloaded from

http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/clone_maxx/info.htm?Language=1

I copied the old drive onto the new one using this utility (clone maxx.)  Then I disconnected the old drive and set the new one to be the primary master.  I booted up fine on the new drive, but the clone maxx Ive used seems to be also copying over the old partition information.  I now have a 20gb partition at the start of my new drive and then the rest is showing as unused.  I could create a new partition there, but I'd rather have one big partition.

Second I tried again with formatting the new disk as a basic disk with one big partition.  I repeated the whole process of booting from floppy and swapping the drives over, but the same thing has happened again.

What I would like to know is how to copy the old drive onto the new one but end up with one big partition filling the whole disk?

Any help much apprecited

Chris

[homer]

im no expert at data recovery or harddrive partitioning but i do not believe it is possible to clone your old HD without partitioning your new HD.

[patio]

Use the software that came with the drive. If you didn't recieve a CD with it simply DLoad it from the new drive manuf. site and use it to create a bootable CD.
You'll have to hook up the old drive as it was...primary master.

[chrisg147]

Hi

It didn't come with any software, and the Hitachi website doesn't seen to have any 

[soybean]

My guess is you want to new hard drive all under one partition because that's what you're familiar with.  But, partitioning a drive can be advantageous and many people prefer to have multiple partitions.  A general scenario is that the C partition would be where Windows is installed and other programs.  But, data files, photos, music, etc., could be stored on one or more other partitions. 

That 20GB partition that was created on your new drive would be fine for Windows and programs; 20GB would be adequate for Windows and programs for most users.  If more space is needed, programs can be installed on another partition. 

My point: why not leave the 20GB partition as is, and create one or more partitions on the rest of the drive space? 

[patio]

Do you mean the new drive is an Hitachi ? ?