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When reinstalling Windows XP, I made a 3gb partition and installed it to that. Unfournately, being a bit clueless, I didn't make another one and now my 250gb drive only has a usable capacity of 3gb.

Is there anyway I can change this, now that I've installed Windows and am using it now?

Thanks

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Sure, go to Disk Management (right click 'My computer' -> click 'Manage' -> under 'Storage' -> Disk Management, or more simple: start -> run -> diskmgmt.msc) where you can create another (or more) partition(s) on the free space.

If you want to make the one partition you already have bigger, this can't be done with the standard disk management tool of windows XP, but there is 3rd party software that can do this.
Acronis Disk Director Server is one I know of.

Update: There is also the command line tool Diskpart which ships with XP. This program has quite some limitation though.

  • It can only 'extend' partitions into unallocated space to the left or to the right (I think this covers your situation).
  • System or boot volumes may be blocked from being extended.
  • You cannot extend the partition if the system page file is located on the partition.
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Appreciate the answer! – alex Jul 27 '09 at 10:34
You can enlarge an NTFS partition under XP without 3rd party software. But I think it only works from command line. – KovBal Jul 27 '09 at 10:40
What are the commands KovBal? – alex Jul 27 '09 at 11:11
I think he's talking about diskpart, I'll update my answer. – fretje Jul 27 '09 at 11:45
The work around for extending a boot or system volume is to make it a data drive in another system and then use disk part and disk manager to extend it, then put it back in the other system. It would be some work with physical drives, but I do it with VMs all the time. Some people don't like Vista, but this is one thing that became much easier than in XP. – Bratch Jul 27 '09 at 14:42
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A free tool to do that is GParted which is included in the LiveCD Parted Magic.

Be sure to backup your data before resizing!

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