I have a 200gb Western Digital hdd, but when I check my C drive it says its only 128gb. I know I was sent the right model because it says 200gb on the hdd itself. I know very little about partitioning, etc, so I might have done something wrong when installing windows. If anyone knows what the problem is and how I can get the most out of the hard drive, please let me know.
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200GB hdd- only 128GB
- Thread starter mash
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I read the sticky, but I already have SP2 installed. There was another link saying that I may need a controller card (here ) but wouldnt that be for older bios? If not, what controller card would I need for it? I'm definitely not paying $45 for something that should be included (although I got it oem, I expected all 200gb). If I am missing another fix, let me know. And the flaming isnt needed, please only post if you can help.
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update the bios for your mobo, old mobo's, like made before 2001 ? i think, didnt support large drives over 130G.
NoxTek
The Geek Redneck
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mash said:
Don't pay attention to the flamers... unfortunately on every forum you will have a bunch of little asshat mini-mods that troll around. What's the fucking use of having a forum if you can't ask a question, even if it may be covered in some poorly written sticky post? Why even have a forum at all? Luckily most of us are eager to help you out.
As a general rule if your system is recent enough to run Windows XP it should have a BIOS capable of LBA-48 addressing on the IDE controller. (Large drive support) There are exceptions to that rule though, so if you will give us the model of your motherboard or the model of your PC if it's a prebuilt system, maybe we can find out for sure.
You may also need to check the jumpers on the drive itself. Many very large PATA drives still ship with a jumper that limits them to 137GB when in place, and sometimes they even ship with this jumper installed... yikes.
Before you do anything jump into Control Panel -> Administration -> Computer Management -> Storage Management. On your primary drive where C: is located, does it show a bunch of unused space beyond the C: drive?
And check that jumper!
You should NOT need an additional controller card, as even on the rare chance that your motherboard didn't ship with a LBA-48 capable BIOS one has probably been released for it and it will just be a matter of a BIOS update.
NoxTek
The Geek Redneck
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mash said:
OH and another thing, you say you already have SP2 installed.
Was it slipstreamed onto your Windows XP disc, or did you install Windows XP and then install SP2? If you used an old (no SP2) windows CD to install there's your problem... the original release of Windows XP did not have proper support for large drives and as a result will only format/create a 137GB partition (128GB binary).
Assuming the above scenerio is true, you can do one of two things:
A. Slipstream SP2 into your copy of Windows XP and then re-install, using the Windows XP installer to create and format the drive.
B. Use a partition resizing tool like Partition Magic to resize your C: partition to use the entire 200GB drive.
C. Use the storage management in your current installation of Windows to create another partition that uses the remaining amount of space on the drive.
My recommendation is to go with plan A. It's pretty easy to do and will save you a lot of trouble in the long run. All you need is about 20 minutes of your time and your original Windows XP CD and a CD/DVD burner.
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GO into Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Computer management / disk management to see if you can see the rest of your HD