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250 Gb hard Drive showing only 125 Gb?!
ant31
Posts: 85 Forumite
in Techie Stuff
Hi..
Brother in law (very nice guy!) has just brought a new hard drive - 250 Gb and installed it. It is showing as a 125 gig hard drive for some reason. Its a Maxtor Sata and he's using Win XP.
I told him to expect it to show some shrinkage coz of the different ways of measuring gigs, but I would have expected it to be about 225 gigs.
It's a bit odd to be exactly half.. any ideas? Is there limitations on HD size still - i thought that XP had got rid of all that.
Cheers for any help.
Ant
Brother in law (very nice guy!) has just brought a new hard drive - 250 Gb and installed it. It is showing as a 125 gig hard drive for some reason. Its a Maxtor Sata and he's using Win XP.
I told him to expect it to show some shrinkage coz of the different ways of measuring gigs, but I would have expected it to be about 225 gigs.
It's a bit odd to be exactly half.. any ideas? Is there limitations on HD size still - i thought that XP had got rid of all that.
Cheers for any help.
Ant
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Comments
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You do lose space, but not half! Is he sure it is a 250gb HD?
It could be that the bios cannot support 250gbI’m a Forum Ambassador and I support the Forum Team on the Quick Grabbit, Freebies, Overseas Holidays & Travel Planning and the UK Holidays, Days Out & Entertainments boards.
If you need any help on these boards, do let me know. Please note that Ambassadors are not moderators. Any posts you spot in breach of the Forum Rules should be reported via the report button, or by emailing forumteam@moneysavingexpert.com.
All views are my own and not the official line of MoneySavingExpert.0 -
ta for that..
Checked the idea that it IS a 250 Gb hard drive - he swears that all the docs say so and it is reproted in Control panel as blah blah 250 something!
He used the Crucial mem checker to establish a suitable drive so I would hope it would be the right one and it does support SATA so I presume he has a newish Mboard.
What's the easiest way to identify the bios?
Ant0 -
What service pack is installed? Have you gone into administrative tools>computer management>disk management and checked in there to see what its showing as.
If your motherboard supports sata then your bios will definitely be capable of seeing a drive that size.
Edit: its a bit of a strange size, 125gb. He could always download this utility from Maxtor them selves and see if it helps?0 -
To be honest I don't know how you can check, but I am sure someone can help you out.
If it is the bios (which it may not be) an update of the bios should help.I’m a Forum Ambassador and I support the Forum Team on the Quick Grabbit, Freebies, Overseas Holidays & Travel Planning and the UK Holidays, Days Out & Entertainments boards.
If you need any help on these boards, do let me know. Please note that Ambassadors are not moderators. Any posts you spot in breach of the Forum Rules should be reported via the report button, or by emailing forumteam@moneysavingexpert.com.
All views are my own and not the official line of MoneySavingExpert.0 -
he may need to do a reg hack to show full amount otherwise will show up as 127gb
see what computer management says he may be able to make a new partition with the remainderWannabe DFW NERD: Not fully fledged member yet !
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Try re-formatting it using he disk management console, or boot from a win 98 floppy in to dos and format X: (where x is the drive letter).
It may also be worth formatting the missing 125GB as a new partition and then try to merge the two, using either disk mgmt or something like partition magic.
Otherwise as said it could be a BIOS limitation and overcoming that involves a disk overlay program or a bios flash.
(Xp still has some limits with HD, if you use XP to install on a fresh disk as FAT32, it will only format to a 32GB partition max. Once in XP it can format FAT32 to any size supported.)I no longer work in Council Tax Recovery but instead work as a specialist Council Tax paralegal assisting landlords and Council Tax payers with council tax disputes and valuation tribunals. My views are my own reading of the law and you should always check with the local authority in question.0 -
Format the drive into three partitions - this will minimize strinkage. Partition manager is perhaps the easiest way and you won't need to re-install XP, however a boot disk and fdisk does the job equally as well.0
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weird but computer management just shows the one drive as 127.99 GB. Nothing about another partition under this.
He's doing a full reformat so lets see what happens.
Never easy eh!
Cheers.0 -
It may be wise to do the reformat from a win98 disk, it's less picky than using xp's disk management utilities.
https://www.bootdisk.comI no longer work in Council Tax Recovery but instead work as a specialist Council Tax paralegal assisting landlords and Council Tax payers with council tax disputes and valuation tribunals. My views are my own reading of the law and you should always check with the local authority in question.0 -
Win 98 won't recognise a drive that size will it?0
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