Big hard drives
 

I just finished building a new computer and among the components is a 160GB hard drive. Now, everything on the system runs beautifully (if a little hot), but Win XP Pro claims the hard drive only has 127GB total. I've had it suggested that Windows can only see up to a certain amount. Is this true? And if so, will creating a partition solve the problem?
Details:

Maxtor HD 160GB 7200rpm 8mb cache
Windows XP Pro
Intel Motherboard

Go to the Administrative Tools in the Control Panel and then find "Computer Management". Next find "Disk Management". This will show you any partitions on your HD and how the space is being taken up.

My 80GB only shows up as a 74.53 GB due to file organization space or whatever (can't quite recall the reason that happens), so your 160GB shouldn't show up as a 160GB, but what is says on your computer seems way too low.

See if maybe the Disk Manager sees the 160GB but maybe some of the space just isn't in a partition.

i remember that in old pc's, there used to be a bios limitation on how big the hd's could be.

my old compaq would only see up to a 16 gb and i added a 30gb one.

but, hd's come with software that helps u get past this limitation (like maxblast for maxtor).

again, i dont know if this applies to newer bioses.

This post is for anyone with similar issues:

Like the_dude says: go to the site of your HD's manufacturer and download their drive software.

Depending on manufacturer it will allow you to do all kinds of neat things with your drive (like really checking it good before you return it when damaged.) but in all cases it will allow you to surpass any bios limits.

For maxtor look here: [url=http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/maxblast3.htm]www.maxtor.com[/u]

For Western digital look here: www.westerndigital.com

Now once I also found the IBM equivalent software, but I can't find it now... anybody have a link?

-> notes: all links point to the software I was referreing to. Read the rest of their support sites as well if you experience problems.

The solution
 

Well, I had MaxBlast3, but it would have had to reformat the drive, and I already had things set up. On the website, though, I found a small program that enabled the bigger hard drive. If you're using Win XP, you need SP1 installed. Once I'd done that and run the program, around 25GB were suddenly found by Windows. So that brings me to about 152GB, which is certainly more acceptable than 127. I'll probably just use that space for a Linux partition.

There is a difference between the native "capacity" of a disk and the actual amount of formatted space that a disk provides.

Rather than post a lengthy technical disertation on this, I've included a link below (from Seagate's website, but most HDD manufacturers will have something simliar) that describes this discrepancy in detail.

http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/bytes.html

Now, having said that, a 33Gb short-fall does seem quite large.

As other posters have stated, check your partitions via Control Panel, Disk Management.


Mr Mephisto

To use your 160 GB hard drive, you MUST have Windows XP SP1 installed.

The remaining discrepancy in space is due to XP calculating space based on a binary scale (1 KB = 1024 bytes), whiel the HDD manufactuerers use just plain decimal (1 KB = 1000 bytes).

Just went through this myself with a hard disk update...

MathWiz579: the reason for the 80GB to ~75GB change is because manufacturers take a kilobyte as 1000 bytes instead of 1024. Does anyone know how this originated? Either way its annoying :(

Check the link I just posted above.

Sheesh...

:)

Mr Mephisto

Also, WinXP will make 2 copies of your fat Table. One is stored at the beginning of the drive and one is stored at the end of the drive. The one at the end of the drive is used for backup purposes in case the first one fails. Yet another reason for the 80 to 72 GB issue.

Why on earth would you install a drive that large and not partition it - that is unless you're running a file server perhaps ??

I haven't partitioned it yet because I just set it up. Also, I was deciding whether I wanted to stick Linux on there.

Since you have an intel mobo and are on WinXP why not just install the Intel Application Accelerator? That should take care of any inability to access or improper reporting of size for your HD if it's over 127 Gig.

imo it sounds like u need SP1. also some motherboard bios's will need to be updated. not sure on the larger drives of now, but back when they topped 32 gigs a lot of boards needed flashing because thats as far as they would support