New HDD-Disk Managment -Drive size is displayed as less???

**RickT** · 10-12-2007,07:23 PM

New HDD-Disk Managment -Drive sixe is displayed as less???
Hi All,

Just been out and purchased a 250GB PATA HHD to use as a slave.

Fitted the new drive as normal and booted the PC.

Located the drive in Disk Management, Right clicked the DISK 0 which was the new unallocated drive, and clicked initialize,

The drive is showing as 31.49GB Unallocated,

As the drive has not been formatted as yet i thought this would be the reason why,

Right clicked the 31.49GB Unallocated, selected new partition and the "wizard" will only allow a maximum of 31GB drive partition.

As this is a 250 gb drive, i need this to be larger, ideally 250 GB before format.

Please can you advise how i go about formatting the drive and increasing the size??

In the CMOS the drive is showing as 250GB.

Your help will be much appreciated.

RickT

**Ben** · 10-12-2007,07:50 PM

running XP?

XP has service pack 2

The early versions of XP did not come with SP2, you had to either download it or get a disc.

The latest versions of XP have SP2 built in to it so there is no need for downloading.

It is one of these discs you need.

How did you get SP2 on your current machine?

I know this to be true as i had exactly the same issue.

The bios knows ite 250 GB but you can only format to 30 gb ish.

**RickT** · 10-12-2007,07:58 PM

I'm running SP2 with all updates.

Just got a copy of Partition Magic but that only sees it as 31GB too...

Surely XP should be able to see the full size prior to partition though?

Any ideas?

Rick

**Ben** · 10-12-2007,08:03 PM

it doesn't matter about the updates, the important bit is how did it get installed, via download, via bespoke SP2 disc, or was is packaged as part of the XP disc

**RickT** · 10-12-2007,08:08 PM

It was pre-loaded i think... but not 100% sure.. it could of come down as a download.

Rick

**RickT** · 10-12-2007,08:15 PM

just been seeking a bit of help over here..

http://forums.techguy.org/windows-nt...ml#post5409773

**Ben** · 10-12-2007,08:50 PM

lol he's also halifax based.

mention what i have said, or post a link to the thread.

**Plug** · 10-12-2007,08:56 PM

Just a thought - are you using a 40 conductor cable for the CD/slave drive?

Personally, I'd set up the boot drive as IDE Primary Master and other HDD as Primary Slave (both on an 80 conductor cable). Whether you do this on jumpers or cable select is up to you.

Mixing optical and HD drives on the same cable is a bit of a no-no in my experience as the slow access times of optical drives tends to hammer the performance of the HDD. It may also affect the partition size, although I have to admit that's a new one on me.

Swapping the configuration around a bit may help..

Cheers,

Plug

**RickT** · 10-12-2007,09:03 PM

just had a bit of a swap around

Had a swap round,.

IDE 0 - exisitng boot HDD

IDE 1 - DVD as primary, NEW HDD as slave. (jumper forced)

Im unsure about the IDE cable types...

Will have to look closer!

Any other thoughts?

Cheers guys

Rick