Partitioning Problem (not urgent)

[beeblebrox]

I'm running Win 2K pro and ran into a problem while partitioning my hard-drive. It seems that F-disk sometimes doesn't recognize NTFS drives (my guess).

Anyway...when I finally figured that I should run delpart.exe to get the job done, I had to re-install my operating system with 16mb or so of unpartitioned space. And I did designate the extended partition to use the entire remaining portion of the hard-drive. I couldn't figure out where the heck that extra block of space was. The disk check didn't report any bad sectors...could it be damaged hard-drive space?

Of course it isn't a huge problem but i've gotten kind of anal about stuff since I learned how to format and re-install. I really felt like I knew what I was doing until that 16mb told me otherwise. :)

thanks

[Budfred]

This is not an answer to your question, but you can use WinXP to partition and format your drive. You can do it from within XP if it is not the partition your are using (if I remember correctly), but you can do it from the WinXP CD as well....

[iisbob]

I'm running Win 2K pro and ran into a problem while partitioning my hard-drive. It seems that F-disk sometimes doesn't recognize NTFS drives (my guess).

First FDISK does recognize an NTFS partition-it'll even tell you that it found a " NON-DOS" partition-and most times it'll successfully remove it. However there is no need to use the FDISK utility when you can simply boot from the 2k CD and use it's much more robust partitioning program ( basicly it's akin to delpart, just called diskpart ) to remove any old installations and create/format new ones.

If you're really serious about removing previous partitions ( of any type ) then you can use a program like Ranish Partion manager to zero wipe the drive , or you can Debug it ( for info on using this tool do a search of the forums where i've explained it's use ) then start out with a " new" blank drive.

[beeblebrox]

Thanks...Ranish seems to be a popular program. Its been suggested to me a few times now. I guess I better get with the program and learn how to use it.

Appreciate the help isbob

[mjc]

Reason Ranish is popular.....it works, has many of the features of "the big boys", minus any fancy GUI, and is FREE!

[Paul Komski]

If you create an extended partition and no other primary partition then some unallocated space will always be created at the very start of the physical HDD. This can only be fully allocated by creating a 'normal' primary partition at the start of the drive.