Sometimes I just want to smash a computer with a sledgehammer!

If you're a geek, you've been where I am. Sometimes you've been there with other people's PCs. Right now, I'm there with mine. And I'm not happy.

My main PC had 2 hard drives. 1 for the OS and software. And one for the data/MP3s/Docs/Videos/etc. That way I can move that drive to a new PC and voila!

Well, the data drive crapped out a while back. It started with a few unreadable sectors. That started to spread like a cancer. That really screwed my system up.

So, time to save that data and take this opportunity to blow out Windows and start from scratch on a bigger primary drive. Ah, a fresh Windows install on the horizon. Like fresh laundry, right?

Well, not so fast.

So I've got a fancy, big, fast new Maxtor 320GB drive. Just PATA. It's an older system. I'm thinking I'll just make that my main drive and scrap the idea of a 2 drive system. Maybe a partition or 2 for data.

So I set the jumpers and slap that new drive in and fish for my Windows XP CD. A few blue screens later (not the bad blue screens) and I'm to the drive partition selection. Oh, right 137GB limitation. Now what?

Drive came with software. MaxBlast. OK, great. Reboot to Maxblast.

No go. MaxBlast finds the drive but then gets caught in a weird loop looking for something else. Scratched head and checked a few things and repeated the process a few times just to feel a bit more confused and helpless.

OK, let's try something else. Add the new drive as the secondary drive and go into Windows. Windows has a snap in for drive management. Whee! It sees the drive and lets me quick format it to 320GB with NTFS. Yippee!

Make it the primary drive again and try Windows XP CD setup again. Surely this time the drive that's already formatted to 320GB will show up as a 320GB partition, right? Wrong. 137GB limitation.

OK, fine. Install it on the 137GB partition and onceI get into Windows I can use the utility to merge the partitions.

An hour of loading later and I have a corrupt new Windows load. Argh!

I have work to do - I don't have time for this nonsense!

So, back to the 40GB primary drive for now. You read that right, 40GB!

Sometimes I just hate computers.