RyanRs Posted October 15, 2006 Report Share Posted October 15, 2006 i reinstalled windows XP the other day, and decided to partition my harddisk, keeping the windoes partition smaller to increase the load time.. i made the XP partition 2gb ad the other 4gb.. problem i have now, is i made the XP partition too small! i have like 100mb space left.. i dont install programs etc onto that partition, its purely for XP... and i have removed all clutter etc from that partition and swapped virtual memory to a differnt HDD (i have 5 HDD's connected in total).is there any way i can enlarge the XP partition, without loosing the OS ?? i can backup the XP partition to another HDD... i no u can use ASR (automated system recovery) but im using XP home, and ASR is disabled, it only works on PRO etc ...Any ideas? -obv if i need to backup the XP partition, ill need a program that backs up the BootData too, but i must also be able to resize the FAT32 else the file system will not recognise the extra space in the partition when i resize it. i hate computers!! :@ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Willsey Posted October 15, 2006 Report Share Posted October 15, 2006 yes its very simple mate, if you have MSN add me and ill go through it step by step, but for now, try getting a hold of Partition magic by PowerQuest.... it will do it the easiest and safest way possible Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danny Posted October 15, 2006 Report Share Posted October 15, 2006 2Gb Thats FAR too small. Whoever told you it would be faster that way? Personally mines is 20gb. Also use NTFS not stoneage FAT32. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RyanRs Posted October 15, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 15, 2006 (edited) 2Gb Thats FAR too small. Whoever told you it would be faster that way? Personally mines is 20gb. Also use NTFS not stoneage FAT32.i no it will load faster when the OS is on a smaller partition / drive, as on startup it does a scan of the drive, and the smaller it is, the faster its done.. iv had xp installed with minium components added , on a 1.2 GB hdd , and i got the login screen loaded within 7-8 seconds after the bios screen.. im not gona go into the details of why, but i can assure you its true.. 20 gb is way over the top though.. ull find ur virtual memory eats most of that space. i make the VM run on a different drive alltogether, speeds up disk access as it doesnt get busiy reading and writeing VM as well as trying to load programs etc.NTFS is only better for the power user too, as in networkd computers etc, as it provides better security and very slightly faster file access.. but it also has dissadvantages, like becoming a rite pain in the backside if ever you need to reinstall windows etc. it almost locks you out of your own computer! i find FAT32 works fine for me.. supose the differneces are simila to the differences between XP home and XP pro.. i used to sware by XP pro, but then i realised , i dont need all the extra functions of increased security etc etc.. and therefore XP home works perfect for what i need. but each to there own Edited October 15, 2006 by RyanRs Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danny Posted October 15, 2006 Report Share Posted October 15, 2006 My computer boots like 8 seconds or so anyway (A crummy old xp2400) running a bog standard xp pro sp2 install. Your page file never goes over twice your amount of ram anyway (2gb in my case). I also install all my programs/games on the same 20gb windows partition. Installing them anywhere else is pointless because once you format anyway they wont work so will need reinstalling. All my documents are safely kept away on my other drive.You say you partitioned the drive into 2gb/4gb does that mean your running windows off an old 6gb drive? If so the drive will be a hell of a lot slower than any modern drive.The MAJOR reason to use NTFS is the fact you can actually have files over 4gb as well as indexing, no curruption. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Extreme_biker0 Posted October 15, 2006 Report Share Posted October 15, 2006 (edited) A tip if you have multiple hard disks in your pc is to strip the pagefile across multiple physical disks. Windows VM algorithms are very good and take advantage of this and speed up VM access massively.It essentially creates a raid 0 array for your pagefile, increasing performance massively.Don't bother splitting it across partions on the same disk though, because as you might imagine, this is completely pointless.Go Windows key+break (system properties) --> Advanced tab --> Performance settings button --> Change VM settings button, although you probably already knew this.I can really vouch for this. Having stripped mine across 2 drives on 2 separate ide channels performance on my terminal server has noticable improved.Oh, and pagefile access is best on a drive formatted in NTFS default allocation size. Edited October 15, 2006 by Extreme_biker0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poopipe Posted October 16, 2006 Report Share Posted October 16, 2006 is there any way i can enlarge the XP partition, without loosing the OS ?? you could try Gparted - it worked for me when i wanted to shrink a fat32 partition so I could install linux. I'm not sure if it supports NTFS to be honest thoughit's free but not exactly for the faint hearted - if you want friendly go for one of the non-free ones but for that money you might as well just buy another disk. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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