Hard Drive Preparation for Windows XP (Part 2)

On the next screen, leave Primary Partition selected & click on Next again.

A drive can contain or more partitions so on this screen you need to pick how lots of partitions you need & how massive you need each to be by supplying the size in MB. For example, if your new drive is a 250 Gig, you may need it to be a single 250 Gig drive, 125 Gig drives, or even 50 Gig & 100 Gig drives!

Note: Each partition will appear in Windows Explorer as a different drive - with it is own drive letter, like E: F: G: & so on.

In case you need to make use of all the space as a single drive, the partition size is already set to the maximum value for the drive so you click on the Next button.

In case you need to split the drive in to smaller drives then you need to adjust the worth on screen.

There is 1024 MB in Gigabyte, but for simpler maths, you won't be far out in case you use 1000 MB when deciding on what number to type. For example, in case you need a partition EXACTLY0 Gig in size, the number you need to enter is0 x 1024 (10240 MB). In case you enter 10000 0 x 1000), then you finish up with a partition 9.77 Gig in size - close to0 Gig for most of us...

In fact, hard drive manufacturers use 1000, so when your new '250' Gig drive is installed, Windows will tell you there is only under 233 Gig free space on it. 17 Gig instantly gone!

As an example, I have a 60 Gig drive & desired to split it equally to get 30 Gig partitions. The first partition I created with a size of 30720 (1024 x 30). I then created a second partition with the remaining '30' Gig on the drive. When I'd done, Windows told me the second drive was not 30 Gig, but 25.8 Gig. Not equal eh?

Using 1000 in lieu of 1024, the drives ended up a tiny closer in size, weighing in at 29.29 & 26.59 Gig respectively.