harddrive issue

Jarod888 · #1 24th Dec 05, 12:22 AM

I recently went to reinstall windows. I pulled out my original harddrive, and set it a side, because there is still stuff on it.
I plugged in a formatted wd 250 gig hard drive, exactly like the previous one.

Put in the windows cd, let it do its thing, and when it popped up where to install windows it had the 250 gig western digital showing.

stupidly, even though it was formatted in NTFS and had nothing on it, i deleted the partition so windows would do the format. when it showed unpartioned space it only showed 136 gigs...

I thought it was odd but i installed windows anyway. After the installion it still showed only 136 gigs.
I popped in my western digital tools cd, and it showed the capacity of the drive at 250 gigs but showed only a partitioned space of 136 gigs and nothing else. being that it is the boot drive it would not allow me to do anything to it... I also checked it in the admin tools of windows, same thing 136 gigs and nothing else showing.

I did everything again, using the windows cd, i deleted the partition and reinstalled. My windows cd does not have any service packs on it so i manually installed sp2. still same issue... I had no other drives installed when i formatted, so it didn't erase the wrong drive.

I used the primary ide and had the drive on the master slot, with nothing in slave, The jumper was set to cable select.
After i reinstalled and updated the chipset drivers and everything it is still the same, I dont think that it is the motherboard because when i plugged in the other drives they showed proper capacity, now they do have things on them but that shouldn't make a differance..
any ideas would be appriciated.. thanks!

Voodoo · #2 24th Dec 05, 01:02 AM

I think that XP without any service pack sees only up to 137 gigs. Why the whole disk does not show up after installing sp2, I don't know. I think you have 2 options here.

1. Get an install disk with sp2 slipstreamed. or
2. Try and use partitionMagic or something similar after installing sp2.

Cheerz
Dave

DoG · #3 24th Dec 05, 03:41 AM

Go to the Maxtor website and download the MaxBlast software, run it and it should set windows up to see the full 250gig drive.

mikeh420 · #4 24th Dec 05, 06:19 AM

It might also be a limitation of the motherboard, approximately every quadrupling of hard drive size sees a barrier, 540MB, 2G, 8G, 40G, 137G

Jarod888 · #5 24th Dec 05, 08:42 PM

Ok, I rebooted and the unallocated space showed up in the computer mangement center of windows. I am currently formatting it. I want to combine the new partition with my primary partition. Can I do that in windows management or do I need to get a partioning program?

PCTech · #6 25th Dec 05, 03:33 AM

check here

http://www.betaone.net/forum/thread-16151.html

I had the same issue with a 200GB harddrive.

Try this first though, there is a registry patch to enable 48bit lba stuffs (large harddrive patch) its just a .reg file, not sure where to find it but, it shouldn't be to hard to find, then if all else fails read the above post, it can be a little difficult to figure out!