Is it possible to format and partition a 160GB drive to only 80GB?

I know this sounds silly, but my Trainz hard drive died, so I ordered a same model 80GB hard drive from an Ebay Seller .

But I was quickly sent a 160GB drive. I had previously used an 80GB for the Trainz and a 60GB for backups and other stuff. this gave a total of about 140GB.

I have always used Windows XP with no service packs, (using FAT32) this can only see about 137GB or so total, so the drives worked well.

Now with this 160GB, I would be over the limit already with just this one drive. Before I send it back for an exchange, I have been wondering if it's possible to format the big drive down to only 80GB, leaving the rest of it unallocated space, then with the backup 60GB drive , to have the correct total.

This may sound kind of dumb, but I'd like to hear opinions. If no opinions, no harm done! Bob P.
 
Are you using TS10, and a Windows 32 bit laptop ?

Me ... I have a 110 GB HD (2 GB RAM) old integrated graphics Toshiba 105, ten y/o laptop that badly needs to have Trainz completely taken off it (so the old beater' laptop can once again be used just for general computing and pictures), and have Trainz transferred preferably to a secondary desktop PC (PUNEY 300W LightOff® PS) 1TB HD, 8GB RAM,GT430 video card (as you can swap in hardware such as: high end video cards, a high wattage power supply, and a 1TB HD

I would not go the route of buying an ASUS ROG laptop that costs $2700 (unless I hit the lottery)

Desktop ... Desktop ... Desktop :cool:
 
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I'd convert it to NTFS then you'll get the full size. I always thought the limit on FAT 32 was 32 GB and you needed to do something fancy to get to 127 GB.

NTFS has a few other nice features as well.

Cheerio John
 
Hello back to you guys,

Johnwhelan, I have thought about converting to NTFS, but I will have to dig the facts out on Google to see if NTFS increases the amount of disk space that can be recognized.

The limit using FAT32 is maximum 32GB sized partitions. I think the overall disk limit is 137GB. I had three partitions on my old 80GB drive, one small one for Windows XP and the browsers, and then a D: and E: partition for the two Trainz that I use (2004 and Classics 1&2) (I know, Cascaderailroad How can I live with 2004 !!! It's all so horrible!!! with no real content manager !!! Oh the pain of it all!!!) :'(

I will have to study the procedure for partitioning again, to make sure I get it right. I am using an old 40G IDE drive right now, and I somehow partitioned it, and extended the C: partition with a program that I have, and ended up with the boot partition as D: and have been unable to change it back to C:, it is a long story (it used to be my Windows 98se drive). However, it works OK.

I must have the second drive because that's where I put backup disk images, which can be restored to C:

Stagecoach, thanks for the link to Microsoft, perhaps it will help refreshing my mind about the partitioning !

My main concern is if the leftover 80GB unallocated space on the big drive they shipped, will affect the operation of things!
 
Most decent partitioning programs will convert a fat32 to NTFS without destroying the data, or see here for the correct and simple way of doing it from the command line https://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/bb456984.aspx

Assuming your PC's bios can see the 160GB disk as 160GB then there will not be a problem in formatting it with NTFS as one partition or you can split it if preferred.
 
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Hello back to you guys,

Johnwhelan, I have thought about converting to NTFS, but I will have to dig the facts out on Google to see if NTFS increases the amount of disk space that can be recognized.

The limit using FAT32 is maximum 32GB sized partitions. I think the overall disk limit is 137GB. I had three partitions on my old 80GB drive, one small one for Windows XP and the browsers, and then a D: and E: partition for the two Trainz that I use (2004 and Classics 1&2) (I know, Cascaderailroad How can I live with 2004 !!! It's all so horrible!!! with no real content manager !!! Oh the pain of it all!!!) :'(

I will have to study the procedure for partitioning again, to make sure I get it right. I am using an old 40G IDE drive right now, and I somehow partitioned it, and extended the C: partition with a program that I have, and ended up with the boot partition as D: and have been unable to change it back to C:, it is a long story (it used to be my Windows 98se drive). However, it works OK.

I must have the second drive because that's where I put backup disk images, which can be restored to C:

Stagecoach, thanks for the link to Microsoft, perhaps it will help refreshing my mind about the partitioning !

My main concern is if the leftover 80GB unallocated space on the big drive they shipped, will affect the operation of things!

If you have a big pool of space then you can spread the files out more evenly. With partitions each is in a separate physical part of the drive which means the head has to move across the disk which is the slowest thing you can do on a disk drive. So from a performance point of view partitions are bad. The other problem with drives is when they get to roughly 80% full performance drops off as the operating system starts to put files in small corners scattered across the drive and for TANE and Trainz they have lots of small files for an asset and you want them grouped together. Defragmenting software doesn't help, it works best on big fires but it tends to split the groups of small individual files up. With partitions once one partition hits the magic 80% then your drive performance takes a hit. So even if you're 80 gigs isn't used by being available it con increase performance by reducing scattering.

It used to be that partitions contained physical tracks but the outside tracks can hold more data. They are rather nice if you can use them as the head doesn't have to move off the track. The inner tracks don't hold as much but these days the drive says to the operating system I have so many tracks of this size when in fact it has fewer physical tracks of varying size. Win 10 is better at understanding these drives and getting better performance out of them.

NTFS minimizes the number of disk accesses required to find a file so that means faster access speed. With Trainz and TANE it can take as many disk accesses to find the file as to read it so this is important. You can compress a folder etc useful for gaining disk space. There are trade-offs on this the compression requires a bit of CPU to decompress them but it is transparent and the files are held in a larger file so fewer disk accesses are required. NTFS also has its own method of keeping the files secure and recovering from read errors.

Cheerio John
 
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Well, I have a lot to think about here! I have to look up info about my mother board and see if NTFS (and the BIOS) will see all the 160GB.

I'll also have to read the manual on my imaging program called Drive Image 5, and see if that will work with NTFS.

clam1952, do you know if the NTFS in Windows XP Pro with no service packs will see and use the whole 160GB? (for FAT32, you need service packs to use the whole drive).

I do have a decent partitioning program (MiniTool Partition Wizard) and it has a choice to convert FAT32 to NTFS. I presume though, that the NTFS drive will be able to work with the FAT32 backup drive??

(I did take a look at the EaseUs partition manager and will try it if my current manager cannot accomplish any certain thing I need.)

By the way, it won't work to make two partitions and put the backup in the second partition... if the drive dies, I won't be able to get to any partition!

johnwhelan, I had a little trouble completely following your very detailed explanation, but it sounded like you said that it is better to put the both Trainz Versions I use into the same partition and the access times will be faster.

I might have to leave this thread for a while to get all the information, and then I have to go through all the trouble of putting the drive into the case etc. (I really have to find out for sure if I can use NTFS, I could swear that I've heard that once you use it on a drive, you can't go backwards to FAT32?)

Thanks for your help fellows. I will drop in here every day to see if any other comments show up!
 
I have about 10 bare external hard drives, the oldest would date back to around 2000, Win10 can read them all, Fat32 and upwards, I even have a couple of IDE drives that Win10 will read through an adaptor so I don't think that converting to NTFS will give you any future problems.

Pity you didn't upgrade to Win 7 while it was available. Much better program. I have mixed feelings abut Win 10.

Peter
 
XP will read up to 2TB with NTFS, Service pack shouldn't make any difference. It was Win98 that needed an updated Fdisk to read 160GB drives I think it was.

At one stage I had an XP PC with 1 x 250GB, 1 x 500GB partitioned into 2 x 250's all NTFS.

Curious as to why no service pack? If it was a download issue Microsoft would have sent you a disk free of charge, that's how I got mine as I was on Dial up in those days.

@ Peter, I have an IDE PCI adapter in one of my PC's extra storage with 4 IDE drives plus 4 Sata drives (6 ports) and the motherboard also has an IDE port as well, I use it for various other operating systems and storing stuff on mainly.
Got quite a collection of working IDE drives sat in a drawer here so thought might as well use some of them to use!
 
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The limit using FAT32 is maximum 32GB sized partitions.

The limit on FAT32 is 127Gb. However, not all formatting programs can create a partition that size, because they were created when there were compatibility issues with some software (such as installation utilities) that caused them to fail on partitions larger than 32Gb. But the 32Gb limit was always an artificial restriction, and there are plenty of formatting and partitioning programs that can use the full 137Gb, even some from MS.
 
I don't know, this new drive is turning into such a hassle. I ordered the exact same drive that worked happily for eight years (WD800AAJS) 80GB 8 mb cache) and they send me a WD1600 same thing, but 160GB. This was a simple little $15 transaction (free shipping) if they had got it right.

Now, it will be a hassle to get a return slip and prepaid shipping label from them all the way from me, in Massachusetts to them, in California.

I chose to stick with the no service pack and FAT32 because everything worked so beautifully, including my old disk imaging program, and especially old games, which is one of my little pleasures of life, picking up an old, old game and seeing what the experience is. I've had many old games that work on this computer and not properly on my XP Service Pack 3 one.

By the way I have the SP2 and SP3 on a CD, downloaded at the public library. (I'm on dial up at home) (I know pain pain pain) (but I do not get viruses)!

I think can accomplish the formatting of a 80GB drive, but I will not make three partitions like I did before C: D: E:.
I'll take johnwhelan's advice and make only two partitions. The small C: drive for the operating system and browsers etc.

I think I'm gonna try to exchange the drive. (If I have not waited too long, about five days). Thanks for all your kind input guys! Bob P.
 
I think I'm gonna try to exchange the drive. (If I have not waited too long, about five days). Thanks for all your kind input guys! Bob P.
There is absolutely no reason to return the drive. If you want to treat it exactly like your existing drive that will work fine - there will simply be an unpartitioned/unused portion. If you have a drive cloning utility it can clone the existing partitions to the new drive at the same size. That might not be the default option, but it is certainly possible.

The reason that they sent you that drive is that 'small' drives are no longer available. Bigger drives can do exactly the same job at no greater cost.

The only time you are locked into a small drive is when the BIOS doesn't support the larger size, and that would have to be a very old machine.
 
As Bob says there is no reason to return the drive, it will happily format as 80GB.

More than likely they can't get 80GB drives any more so sent the 160 so might find they can't exchange it anyway.
 
I don't know, Builder Bob. I just went back to Ebay to request an exchange. The drive I first ordered has gone up in price, and I'm sure it still said that there were more than ten still available.

There is absolutely no reason to return the drive. If you want to treat it exactly like your existing drive that will work fine - there will simply be an unpartitioned/unused portion. If you have a drive cloning utility it can clone the existing partitions to the new drive at the same size. That might not be the default option, but it is certainly possible.

Your answer if it is right, is what I really wanted to know for sure. I don't have a cloning utility but I have learned something.. Never have heard of cloning software. Can they clone partitions from the second IDE drive?

All the uncertainties of this are too much for me, like does my BIOS work for bigger drives. Stuff like that is hard to find on Google. I am an older guy and all the hassles are getting harder for me than they used to be! :confused:

Besides that I just sent a message to the seller asking for an exchange. We'll see how it goes. I told him about the 137BG limit (or whatever you guys said it is). Hope it doesn't cost me shipping! Best wishes, Bob P.

I must be online at the same as clam1952 and have seen his message. Yes, just formatting it as 80GB was the answer I really wanted to hear. Maybe the seller will tell me I can do that also! You never know??? Thanks!
 
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Your answer if it is right, is what I really wanted to know for sure.
This was your original question: "I have been wondering if it's possible to format the big drive down to only 80GB, leaving the rest of it unallocated space"

The answer to that question is an unequivocal YES. You have also received a lot of other advice, which you can ignore or not at your option. But if you ask a question like that and get an answer from more than one responder, with no contradictions, I think you should go with it.

If your hardware cannot handle a drive of that size (which is extremely unlikely) then it will be reported as whatever your hardware can handle, and you won't event have to think about what size to format it to.
 
I don't know, Builder Bob. I just went back to Ebay to request an exchange. The drive I first ordered has gone up in price, and I'm sure it still said that there were more than ten still available.



Your answer if it is right, is what I really wanted to know for sure. I don't have a cloning utility but I have learned something.. Never have heard of cloning software. Can they clone partitions from the second IDE drive?

All the uncertainties of this are too much for me, like does my BIOS work for bigger drives. Stuff like that is hard to find on Google. I am an older guy and all the hassles are getting harder for me than they used to be! :confused:

Besides that I just sent a message to the seller asking for an exchange. We'll see how it goes. I told him about the 137BG limit (or whatever you guys said it is). Hope it doesn't cost me shipping! Best wishes, Bob P.

I must be online at the same as clam1952 and have seen his message. Yes, just formatting it as 80GB was the answer I really wanted to hear. Maybe the seller will tell me I can do that also! You never know??? Thanks!

I'd stay with your existing drive. Worse case it will format just as the old one.

The operating system XP in this case intercepts any calls to the hard drive and has the responsibility to translate the calls to something the drive understands. Formatting the drive as NTFS will have no effect on your software. The operating system isolates it from the software. This was not the case for DOS but it is the case for Windows NT and anything later. XP is a later version of Windows NT.

"Trust me I'm a programmer." Seriously on this one it will work it will just be a bit quicker at finding things and loading them.

Cheerio John
 
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