Lost Hard Drive Space

[Belmat]

Hello, everyone. I could use some help, if you don't mind.

I recently purchased a brand new 320GB Hard Drive (the exact item is a 320GB Seagate HDD bought from microdirect.co.uk) but after I installed it (installing a fresh copy of Windows XP on it, too) I noticed that it was only displaying 127GB.

Is there any reason for this? Is it a faulty hard drive?

Any information or help you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

[keith43]

Hey Belmat

After a little look into this, it seems that at a guess you have got XP but not the service packs installed. Have a little read of this, Computing.Net - Showing incorrect Hard drive size
Installl service pack 2 and then hopefully your problems will be sorted. If you have any problems ask for more help.

Keith

[magicman]

not all Os support large drives, usually they only support upto 120gig so anything above is not seen. There is a large drive enabler that when run will tell the Os how to see bigger drives, you can get that from here.

http://www.infos-du-net.com/en/telec...-Drive-Enabler.

It changes the registry so the Os will then see the size, it is to be run after an install so load your Os, the Os will see it as 117gig lets say, run the program, and then the Os sees it at what it actually is

Hope this helps

[Bulldoguk1]

could be your mobo needs flashing

[DBoyUK]

Is it a SATA HDD? XP won't see any bigger than about 130Gb without SATA drivers installed. As pointed out above, this is rectified with Service Pack 2.

[DBoyUK]

Just noticed you were installing a fresh copy of XP. If it is SATA and you ever need to do this again from an XP install cd with no service pack, then you have 2 options.

You either hit F6 at the initial blue screen when you boot from the CD. Or you do what I do and build your own custom XP install cd using NLite or some other tool.

If you choose the F6 method then you will need the SATA drivers on floppy disc. Good old XP won't ccept anything else.