Hard drive only showing half of it's capacity - aberdeen-music

Johnny Mac · **Hard drive only showing half of it's capacity -** 04-03-2008, 12:33

HELP!

Just built a new pc and have a 500Gb SATA Hard drive installed.

Just loaded on Windows XP and it's showing as only 240Gb disc capacity!

Where can I fix this?

The Bios?

It was a blank disk so there are no partitions.

Chris · 04-03-2008, 12:46

What version of XP is it? SP1 or SP2?

If you check regedit the following value should be 1:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\atapi\Param eters\EnableBigLba

Johnny Mac · 04-03-2008, 12:52

It's SP2. Which is weird, as I know it's SP1 that can only handle up to 130 odd Gb.

I'll check that setting when I get home tonight.

Cheers dude.

Neutral · 04-03-2008, 18:11

Might have more than one partition

Johnny Mac · 04-03-2008, 18:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neutral

Might have more than one partition

No, it's a new drive.

I can't get the fucker to work.

Anyone any ideas?

Stripey · 04-03-2008, 18:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johnny Mac

No, it's a new drive.

I can't get the fucker to work.

Anyone any ideas?

try adding a new partition.

Johnny Mac · 04-03-2008, 18:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stripey

try adding a new partition.

I can add new partitions.

But i just want 1 partition the full 250Gb.

It's a brand new drive with only Windows XP installed.

Chris · 04-03-2008, 18:39

What does it show as in your partition manager? Does it show as the full 500Gb in 1 partition? Or just the 250Gb in one partition?

Johnny Mac · 04-03-2008, 18:40

It shows as 137Gb.... like it's SP1, but I have SP2..........

Fucking annoying.

Really can't be fucked wiping the thing again.

emergency72 · 04-03-2008, 18:51

I have never seen any problems with disc sizes in XP.

Try running diskpart (from command line) then use LIST DISK to see if it treats the missing space as free space or not. If it does, try booting from an NTFS boot disk and running DISKPART.

> DISKPART
DISKPART> LIST DISK

DISK ### | Status | Size | Free
---------------------------------------
Disk 0 | Online | 136 GB | whatever GB

DISKPART> SELECT DISK 0 (provding disk 0 is the disk)
DISKPART> LIST VOLUME

(as above but volumes..)

DISKPART> SELECT VOLUME 1 (providing 1 is the volume)

DISKPART > EXTEND

It should then extend the partition to the full size...

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