Question : Problem: Easy... A few simple questions relating to large drive, fdisk , intel app accel , partitioning and xp

Hi their i have a few things bothering my mind and i'd like to see what your answers are , i have a 200gb wd and i've had it a year and hit problems hehe....
1) Does writing zero's to the hard drive to wipe everything clean do any damage or is it ok to start a fresh?
2) When i use fdisk to partition this clean drive , it shows obviously the wrong amount of drive space available... can i just create a primary partition... and do the rest in XP ... ?
3) Am i correct in thinking that if i just install the intel application accelerator... the large disk support will be fine and i won't encounter any errors down the line when i use up a lot of gigs... theirfore not needing to install them damned service packs.
4) Is the partitioning in XP ok to use... so long as when i've done... i just format my newly created partitions as you should do... as compared to doing it all in fdisk...
5)If my partitions have no data on them at all (when i've just created them) , is it ok to swap the drive letters around.. you do get the pop up comfirmation about this... iam just wondering if this is ok to do so long as nothing is installed on them partitions.
6)My plan is to : Zero the drive... create a primary partition using fdisk and allocate 20gb to it... then chuck in my xp and install it... then use XP (computer management) to create my other 2 partitions split equally with the rest of the space... Format them 2 partitions... everything is clean and ready to be abused as a computer... Is this all ok to do ... and with the intel app accel installed i won't encounter any problems with the large disk size down the line ... yeah?
Thank you for your time and i hope that iam correct in what i think... i have just recently tryed the computer management way of partitioning and it correctly shown all 200gb of my hard drive space... so iam assuming the intel app accel is okie dokie yeah?!?! :D hehehe ... Thank you again , Steph.

Answer : Problem: Easy... A few simple questions relating to large drive, fdisk , intel app accel , partitioning and xp

Hi SpEJay,
> 1) Does writing zero's to the hard drive to wipe everything clean do
> any damage or is it ok to start a fresh?

No problem with this I ever heard - I just used Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN) to wipe 15 machines a couple weeks ago.

> 2) When i use fdisk to partition this clean drive , it shows obviously
> the wrong amount of drive space available... can i just create a primary
> partition... and do the rest in XP ... ?

You could... but why bother?  XP can do all that for you when you set it up.  FDISK is antiquated and shouldn't be used if you're setting up an XP or 2000 or 2003 system.

> 3) Am i correct in thinking that if i just install the intel application
> accelerator... the large disk support will be fine and i won't encounter
> any errors down the line when i use up a lot of gigs... theirfore not
> needing to install them damned service packs.

Not familiar with the intel accellerator.  But if you use 93 octane gas in your car can you forget about ever having the recalls done?  NO! Service packs primarily fix bugs, they don't (often) do much for performance.  They help protect you.  Should you be the first on the block to install a service pack?  Not in my opinion, but once it's been out a couple months and people understand the new bugs, then install it (Definition of a service pack - take out bugs out - put new ones in).

> 4) Is the partitioning in XP ok to use... so long as when i've done...
> i just format my newly created partitions as you should do... as compared
> to doing it all in fdisk...

Why not?  It's FAR better and more flexible then FDISK.  I avoid FDISK as much as possible nowadays (know it quite well, I've been using it since DOS 3.3 - doesn't mean it's very good).

> 5)If my partitions have no data on them at all (when i've just created
> them) , is it ok to swap the drive letters around.. you do get the pop
> up comfirmation about this... iam just wondering if this is ok to do
> so long as nothing is installed on them partitions.

The only thing you shouldn't try changing the drive letters on are the Boot and System Drives - NORMALLY, they are the same - C:.  Other than that, change them to whatever you want.  I often enough rearrange drive letters.  IF you install software to them, then you might have a problem running the software, but otherwise, if you're just storing files (mp3, documents, video, saved game stuff, etc) change them to whatever and whenever you want.

> 6)My plan is to : Zero the drive... create a primary partition using
> fdisk and allocate 20gb to it... then chuck in my xp and install it...
> then use XP (computer management) to create my other 2 partitions split
> equally with the rest of the space... Format them 2 partitions...
> everything is clean and ready to be abused as a computer... Is this
> all ok to do ... and with the intel app accel installed i won't encounter
> any problems with the large disk size down the line ... yeah?

Again, no (recallable) experience with the intel stuff.  That aside, your plan is fine.  Provided you don't have much to install in the way of program files.  I've got so many games and other software, that I use about 60GB on my 73 GB C: drive.  Otherwise, no problem at all with what you want to do.  But zeroing the C: drive is a little pointless.  If you're giving the drive away to someone and don't want your data to be stolen/recovered by them, it makes sense.  For installing an OS it's pretty much pointless.  And again, don't bother with FDISK, just do everything from Windows XP Setup.

> i added the space up to 186.3 gb .... 14mb off ... mmm ... am i
> correct in thinking this is ok yeah... how it should be.. the 14mb
> un-accounted for is for something restore/windows or sumin i
> think i've read somewhere?

Yes, this is ok and how it should be.  No, it's not for a Windows thing.  The problem you are seeing is that Hard Drive makers advertise their drive sizes in terms of billion bytes, where 1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes.  But, the computer sees it as a logical number, a power of 2 - so the computer sees 1 GB as 2 to the power of 30 (2^30), or 1GB = 1,073,741,824.  If you multiply what the computer sees by this number, you'll have over 200,000,000,000 bytes.  But not TECHNICALLY 200 GB - but that's how the manufacturers advertise things.

Note: there WILL be an extra 8 MB left at the end of the disk (that's MB, NOT GB) - that's reserved for Windows should you ever want to make the disk dynamic and try a software RAID 0 (not recommended, ESPECIALLY for your boot disk).

> You can't quick format can you... you have to just format properly
> which takes longer... on a fresh volume yeah?

You can quick format.  The only time I bother with a full format is when I've got a disk I know has some bad sectors.  If this is a new drive, you can argue a regular format is safer, but I've, to the best of my knowledge, never been burned by quickformatting a new disk.