hardrive partitions and windows

[Diamore]

Have a small question.

I'm running a hardrive that is 250gb and windows doesn't reconize any over a certain size. So to use the whole thing it forces me to create a second partition. Question is now, If I want to reinstall windows on the first partition, would this second partition on the same HD be erased or could I use it to backup my files from the first so I can move them over when it finishes the install. It's winxp if that makes any difference.

apologies as well if that was too confusing and thanks for any ideas ^^

[codemonster]

250gb drive would be LBA48 (as in Logical Block addressing for 48bit).
Sure, that doesn't mean anything to you right now, but don't blow it off as technobabble.

If your BIOS is not up-to-date, then it might not recognize the drive as being as large as it really is. Same issue as when 2gig drives came out and logical block addressing was not supported by old BIOS. (there was a software fix for DOS/Windows users from Western Digital called EZBios)

And history repeats itself and again we get new hardware that 'just won't work'. BUT...that drive can work with one huge monolithic partition in your PC.

See, I have MUCH larger drives in my computers and they can handle it. (and with 3 year old motherboards to boot).
Why?
Well, Linux doesn't rely on BIOS settings for how to use the drive. You just need an up-to-date kernel (well, after 2.2 anyway).

But you are running XP? That's ok. Be sure to get ServicePack2, because it has in it a fix to support LBA48. Also be certain that you update your motherboard BIOS. Then you can partition and format the drive in NTFS5 (which supposedly supports up to 16 exabytes).

While you can accomplish said task with existing hardware on your PC, you might want to refrain from that.

Here's why: wasted space and disaster recovery.
Larger partitions use larger clusters, which wastes drivespace when using lots of little files.
A single partition is a single point of failure when your file allocation table fails (on FAT32 parts) or your MFT gets hosed on NTFS parts.

But, hey...what do I know?

rp
www.domain-logic.com