John Colby
jcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Mon Sep 22 09:47:49 CDT 2003
I wasn't offered a choice. Windows didn't ask what size I wanted, didn't offer to partition it, just launched into formatting the drive as it understood it. John W. Colby www.colbyconsulting.com -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Drew Wutka Sent: Monday, September 22, 2003 10:39 AM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving ' Subject: RE: [AccessD] Using a 160mb hard disk Why not just format a small 4,6, or 8 gig partition during the installation. Why try to format the whole thing? Oh well, as you said, the fiasco is over. Drew -----Original Message----- From: John Colby To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Sent: 9/22/03 8:07 AM Subject: RE: [AccessD] Using a 160mb hard disk It's all over now, but not resolved the way I had intended nor wanted. My intention was to install the 160gb drive, carve out about 40g for the OS and Program Files, and use the other 120g for data. the problem I immediately ran into is that Windows 2K simply doesn't understand drives larger than ~135 gb. Windows put support into SP3 so IF you happen to have a copy of Win2K SP3, i.e. the Windows 2K installation disks WITH SP3 already installed (and it appears they are available) then you would probably never run into the problems I encountered. I wanted to use the install disk to partition and format the drive. That simply failed. The install SAID it was formatting a 120gb partition (my first sign of trouble) but after 2 hours of formatting this behemoth, it failed saying the disk was corrupted or damaged (or some such). Sigh. And the weekend is shot to hell. I tried using Maxstore's excellent max blast - that didn't work. I went to Samsung's site (the HD manufacturer) and found a similar program. Used it to create partitions. That seemed to work, could be seen etc but was now loading a multiboot manager before Windows, which isn't enough of a problem all by itself not to use it. However some programs were now failing (Norton utilities? Don't remember.) I ended up (after HOURS AND HOURS of dicking around trying this that and the other) downloading a shareware program called BootitNG. This program correctly partitioned the disk. I then ran Win2K SP4 from my EXISTING 15gb partition on my 40Gb original hard disk which could now see the partitions (but said unknown size). I ran a quick format on both 80 g partitions (that's what I decided on since the disk would be data only) and Windows2K was now happy with these two partitions, I.e. I could read / write to them. I then moved all the data from my 2 old data partitions of the 40g drive, deleted these partitions, and used BootitNG to resize the remaining boot partition so that Win2K and Program Files has the entire 40g drive and my data all resides on the two 80g partitions. An entire day shot screwing around with this. Had I known what I was facing I would have simply bought a 120g drive that Windows could just understand and been done with it. 8-( And yes, I also use NTFS everywhere. John W. Colby www.colbyconsulting.com -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Drew Wutka Sent: Sunday, September 21, 2003 11:50 PM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: RE: [AccessD] Using a 160mb hard disk Are you trying to install to the full 160 gig? If so, don't do that JC. Create a 4, 6, or 8 gig partition, and install the OS to that. Preferably install software to another partition (on another drive if possible.), and then create a 'Data' partition. The smaller OS partition size may sound like folklore, but there are reasons for everything. In the Root drive case, when you 'format' a drive, it builds a 'Table of Contents' for the drive. (If you look at a drive with Windows 2000, which is completely blank/freshly formatted, you'll see that several megs are already used, that's the partition info. The larger the partition, the bigger that database is going to be, and on top of that, the more time it takes to find things. (Indexing on a larger database is slower, right?). Also, I have talked to a few developers, here and there, and have found that many are using FAT32 drives, instead of NTFS. I HIGHLY recommend that everything get's set to NTFS, that can be. There are utilities available (free ones) that you can install on 9x OSes, that enable them to read NTFS, which eliminates the only concern of using NTFS. Drew -----Original Message----- From: John Colby [mailto:jcolby at colbyconsulting.com] Sent: Friday, September 19, 2003 8:39 PM To: AccessD Subject: [AccessD] Using a 160mb hard disk The hard disk on my server (a 40gb maxtor) was filled up, so I bought a 160gb drive for $120 at Newegg. It seems that Windows 2K cannot use any disk larger than 135gb until SP3. Which begs the question, how do you install Win2K base on a disk it can't use correctly? I tried a simple install, and it tries to do a format but fails saying the disk is corrupted. I'm now trying to use the original server system updated to SP3 to format the disk, but even assuming that I manage that, It seems unlikely that I will persuade the Win2K setup disk to recognize the existing / formatted partition given that the setup disk is not at SP3. Is there any way to install Windows on a second drive while already running Windows? Is there any way around this or do I simply have to live with booting up with the 40g drive and using the 160 g drive as pure storage once I get SP3 installed and the registry hack done? John W. 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