I hope this is the right place to ask you mybae simple guestion,but I can't fix it.I bye a HD with 40gb volume,but when I instal xp I have only 32 gb,the 8 gb is lost and I choose a large partition in fdisk.

Can you help me guys? ;)

It seems like your Motherboard might need to have it's BIOS upgraded, as some older m-boards won't support more than 32GB. Check the website of the manufacturer of your PC or the m-board.

thanx for your answer,but I have a new motherbord with nvidia chipset at Atlon xp1800.Can you tell me what options I must set in bios?
thanx :)

Even though 8 gb may sound a little high Rudi you never get the stated capacity. On my machine:

My 80 GB is reported as 74.5
My 120 GB reports as 111

thanx "source"now I see,I just don't know that and I think that this 8 GB just hide somewhere in HD :)

thanx for answer!

Is it the only drive in your computer? Make sure you have set the jumpers correctly and accordingly and not on cable select.

I know that XP reserves a certian amount for partitioning, a fe MB not GB though.

Hmmmm...

8 gig does sound a bit high. Are you using fat 32 or NTFS?

}---:?

If it's FAT32 it's because XP has a limitation were it can only make and format up to 32gigs in FAT32.
Beats the hell out of me why, seems like a big step backwards.

It has no trouble using a bigger partition size it just can't make and format it.
On a new install use a DOS boot disk to make and format the partition. Since you already have it installed you can use Partition Magic to expand it.
Dave

Rudi1: If running XP as we suspect you do, why not redo the operation and make it NTFS? Or am I missing something here about your setup? What do you mean, in your first post, with "when I instal xp I have only 32 gb,the 8 gb is lost and I choose a large partition in fdisk."?

Dont forget that 1mb does not in fact equal 1mb - bios makes some interesting changes to allow this ongoing old technology to work... so if we convert 1mb in bios language, you will in fact loose some hd space.

Well,I read all yours post and must say that when I bye a new HD and my first partition made with fdisk I choose a large drive suport,then I format partition C FAT32 and my first instal of win xp is be fat 32,but the second time when I instal winxp I formated in NTFS,but the drive have the same capaticity 32GB ,8GB unlocated space,but I can't expand this unlocated space.

I'am not shure about jumpers,but I have 2 HD in my machine.

If you have two harddrives in there they must have their jumpers set correctly. At one single IDE-channel there can be not more but one master. (Two slaves are ok.) Normally one can have one HDD as master (the one you boot from) at channel 1, together with the second HDD jumpered as slave. At channel 2 I usually put the CD-rom reader as master (making it possible to boot from a bootable CD).
Most often you'll find a label at the device pointing out the different choices and with a little picture of how to put the "jumpers" to set the device correctly.

About the space: Something is wrong. You shouldn't loose 8 GB. My guess is that you installed the drive, made a partition using XP and formatted it FAT32 and max spossible size, ie 32 GB. Then you made another attempt and used the same partition and this time formatted it NTFS. If this is tru you used the same 32GB-partition in the second try you allready created in your first attempt. The solution is to delete all partitions from the HDD and then, in the XP setup, create a new NTFS-partition, max size of course.
Good luck now!

thanx unicorn for your advice,I try this !You help me a lot with your teach ;)

Cheers!

Hey Rudi :)
Just make sure your drive don't have a jumper, to limit the size to 32GB,
It happend once to a friend of mine, and nomatter whet he tried, he was not able to get all 40
untill I told im of that jumper.
Some drives comes with this "32G clip" (?) to be able to work with some older mobo's.

BearCat,I'am really sorry that you are not a woman,becouse I love you :) .......just joke!

I'am turn off my machine and look in my IBM hard drive and they have a jumper, to limit the size to 32GB,you are wright 100%! Then I set a jumper" device 0 master" and with Partion Magic I expand my drive.Now I have a 41.159.266 GB HD

One stupid jumper to limit 32GB and all my trouble gone now ;),I just hope that I set a jumper correct for master device,becouse I'am not expert with this :)

Thanx my old friend and take care! ;)



and thanx to all of you to,who can try to help me ;)

Lol - Good find!

Rudi :
Man / woman ... whats the difference :P
nevermind :D LOL
Here at B1 we are all one big happy family, with love for all :)
I'm glad you where able to sort it out, and I hope you lost no data while doing this

@Dave, just fyi, I have a 160Gb drive in my box, and I split it up into 50Gbx3 plus the remaining... I thought the limit was 50gb for fat32... am i mistaken? Altho, then again, I have fat32 running on my 120gb drive that's 120gb--one whole partition without problems. hrmm... now i confused myself. :P

-CaP

I now you a long time BearCat and you know what I mean ;)

about hardware,I do this job without lose anything!I use PartitionMagic and no problem :)now thanx to you and this community I have a litle more space in my machine.

Cheers!