Hey,
It's been a while.....
Anyways...I just bought a new Hdd, 500gb, and I'm trying to install Windows XP Pro onto it, but I'm getting issues. It says that there is only 131gb on my HDD. Meanwhile in my BIOS it says my hard drive is 500Gb big. I had this issue before on my mom's computer. I put a 300gb hdd in, and I used the OEM disk that came with it and I it worked fine. What do I have to do to get the rest of my storage back?
I suspect some of the older ATA controllers had 137GB limits. You will have to buy a newer controller card that will support 48-bit addressing and use it with your drive.
Good source of drive limitations: http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/hard_drive_size_barriers.htm
but the computer isn't even that old, maybe 3 years?
And i don't even have a controller card in it
And i don't even have a controller card in it
sure you do, its built into the motherboard!!! hopefully you are plugging the hdd into it .did you format the drive with winxp during install.if yes,that most likely you problem, type this into run, "compmgmt.msc "and go to disk manager you should be able to activate the rest of the drive and formate it .
I didn't format the drive with win XP, I got as far as Partitioning, then I had to stop. This is a brand new HDD.
I didn't format the drive with win XP, I got as far as Partitioning, then I had to stop. This is a brand new HDD.
ok,then you need to go in and delete old partition if any and create a new partition ,and format and reload winxp.
please explain.==I got as far as Partitioning, then I had to stop.
before you format and reformat, does the system bios recognise the HDD as 132Gb, or as 500Gb? if it doesn't show 500, try to update the bios firmware on the motherboard
What happened is....I put in my Windows XP install disc. Pressed enter to setup, agreed to the License thingy. Then when it asked me to select which partition to install on it says: Unpartitioned Space 131079mbs. I want to change this so I can have my full 500gb on 1 partition.
As i posted before...it does show the HDD as 500gb
right. do you have the F6 driver disk? or is the HD set up in IDE emulation mode?
I don't know...i'm guessing its set up in IDE emulation mode
well, look in BIOS setup
what am i looking for?
hard drive/sata/hdd/ide/emulation/ide mode/etc
look in the motherboard manual
I'm sorry I don't understand.......I don't have the manual
well, if you don't, I suggest you take the computer to a lab, to have a PC tech have a look at it.
Ok, well scratch that.... I want to figure this out for myself.....help me understand this
I dont have sata, I have IDE
Have you PARTITION the rest of the drive?
Only FAT32X or NTFS can be a single 500G partition.
So you either need to use one of these, or use "local disk management" to create 2 more partitions on the hard drive.
Right click MY COMPUTER, select MANAGE, find local disk management, locate the disc. and create new partitions, right click / partition off memory
FAT16 cannot be 132Gb. This is an LBA/bios config-compatibility thing
What Caperjack said.
Delete any existing partitions and reformat NTFS.
It's curious that a new drive would show a131 GB unpartitioned space, though.
ok so you guys want me to just continue to install XP onto a 131gb partition?
ok so you guys want me to just continue to install XP onto a 131gb partition?
yeah,that would work ,then you should be able to get the rest of the drive back as another partition ,with disk manager,or there should be a utility to ready the drive for windows on the hdd manufacturers website ,who makes the drive .
but the computer isn't even that old, maybe 3 years?
You need to slipstream Sp2 and all updates onto the OEm disk (which im guessing is XP RTM) as there is updates for big disks.
Use Nlite for it.
ok so you guys want me to just continue to install XP onto a 131gb partition?
That's not what I would do.
When you get to the install screen, you should delete any and all partitions, then create a new NTFS partition using all the space available, which should be 500 GB.
If i'ts not 500 GB, you have a BIOS problem, as someone pointed out, or the drive is not what you think it is.
do as i said first might help
I tried a different copy of Windows and it worked fine..It showed the unpartitioned space as 489.87gb thanks for all your help
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