Computer Hope
Microsoft => Microsoft Windows => Windows XP => Topic started by: McGuire on December 03, 2009, 08:51:14 AM
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I'm doing a clean XP install. I want to reformat the hard drive (C:) and end up with a single primary partition. Currently, the drive is simple dynamic NTFS; half of which is Unallocated. I tired reformatting from the Windows XP installation CD, but I'm getting an error . . . probably because the drive is currently split up? I think I need to delete the Unpartitioned portion of the drive and then reformat, but I don't know how to delete the Unpartitioned portion. Thoughts?
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Why is the drive dynamic? Candidly, I'm not sure if there's any difference in deleting a dynamic partition during installation - I don't believe there is. At the beginning of the installation process you should be given the choice to delete and recreate partitions. Delete the extended and logical partitions and create a primary active partition
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The disk is dynamic because I was studying partitioning and RAID a few months ago and this is one of my Guinea pig computers. When I was just trying to reformat, that unallocated portion to the hd showed up without a drive letter. I'll start again and see what comes up.
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Unallocated simply means unformatted and that's correct, it would not have a drive letter until it's formatted. But it should show up when you try to delete the partition during installation.
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Thanks, I'll let you know how it turns out...
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Could not delete the Unallocated space through disk mgmt. Was able to delete, like you said Allan, during installation.
Q: Is there any benefit to running dskchk /r after doing a clean install?
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The command is chkdsk /r
Did you do a FULL format or a quick format? If you did a full format then chkdsk /r was already run. If not then sure, boot to the recovery console and run chkdsk /r - can't hurt.
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It was a full format. Thanks again.
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You're welcome