My hdd has about 380 gb in unallocated space.

Its a 500 gb hard drive. The reason I think there so much unallocated space is that my windows xp disc doesn't have the service packs, and I read that because of that it only allows to set up a partition of 127 gb. The drive is new and I believe its a Seagate.

It's required in this and every other help forum, that you give all the spec's for your computer when asking for technical help concerning that PC.

So, I gather that you're using an old version, before SP2, of Windows XP.
And you have a 500 gig Seagate hard drive.

NO ONE should be using XP without SP2 installed.
You must upgrade to Service Pack 2..... do that first, before you do anything else.

Then you can use any partitioning software to set up that free space to be a second partition. That is preferable to adding that space to C:.

I've not personally done it, but I'm told that in XP there is a routine to make that space usable. I'm also told it will format that space as NTFS. That would NOT be my personal preference. I find FAT-32 to be much more useful. So I would use "Partition Magic 8" to do that little job and have the option of formatting that space as FAT-32, my personal preference.

Get SP2 and install it. Then come back if you need further help with formatting that extra space. I know we have people here that can walk you right thru that process.

Good Luck,
The Doctor

Nvidia 590 Sli mobo
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200
2 gigs ram
Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTS Graphics card

Yes, i do have SP2 installed. So is this partition magic 8 a program that I have to get, and is it easy to use?

From your very first post, I and I'm sure anyone else would assume that you didn't have SP2. That's why its so very important to give ALL the specs on your system when asking for help.

Here I am at post #6 and still trying to get down to the root of your problem.

Whatever.....
Partition Magic 8 from Symantec is a RETAIL program.
It's a tech tool, first of all and only someone who understands it, should use it.
People who have jumped in and tried to use it without understanding partitioning, have ruined their hard drives.

Have you looked at that partition in Windows Explorer? Have you right clicked on it and then clicked "Format" from the drop down context menu?

If it worked, that would be your fastest and cheapest way to make that space usable.

If not, there are some low cost, maybe even Free, partitioning programs.
I've heard them discussed in forums, but have never used one, since I've been the proud owner of Partition Magic for many years and thru many versions.

Good Luck,
Doc

I'm sorry if my message came off as offensive to you for some reason, but the only reason I typed that is to inform you that I already has SP2. In any case, what I did was just turn it into a new partition. So now I have a C drive and E drive, which is a small hassle but no big deal.

Grrrrrrreat!

Windows names drives in the order that they appear to it.

There is a way to rename all drives below C:, but it's a juggling act and I won't even go into it here.
I've done it just once, under the watchful eye of my friend and computer guru.
It's really not something I want to repeat, anytime soon.

It's kind of like musical chairs, where you have one less chair than players.

Well, I'm glad you figured out how to make that space usable, at least.

Cheers mate!
The Doctor

Hi Bigadaboosh,
To rename drives, right click my computer, select manage then disk management. You should see all the drives and partitions. Easy to
rename all except C:\. If you want E: to be D:, you must first rename D;
which is probably a cdrom drive. I call my dvd drive R: and my cdrw
drive W:. (Z for zip, etc.) Once D: is changed, you can rename E: to D:.
Just right click in depicted drive area and choose rename.
Note for drwhoo: Nearly all linux live cd's and rescue disks and of course
good old Bartpe (UBCD) have Gparted or equal to partition, resize and repartition hard drives. Boot-it-NG can be run from floppy or cd to resize,
image and restore, but I am not clear when one must pay for a license.
The free download is a 30 day trial.
Best wishes, ZZRON

Hello,

Before you perform an operation such as resizing the 127GB disk volume on your Seagate 500GB hard disk drive using Symantec Partition Magic 8, you may want to back up any valuable data on it to another hard disk drive, recordable CD or DVD discs, tape or some other medium, just in case a problem occurs during the operation.

If you would just like to create new disk volumes with their own drive letters, you can do so via the Disk Management (filename: DISKMGMT.MSC) tool that comes with Microsoft Windows XP. This is generally considered a much lower-risk operation and you should not have to do anything outside of your normal planned backups before attempting the operation.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky