500GB Seagate only showing 128GB

Has anybody any idea why a 500GB HDD would appear as 128GB?

HDD is:
http://www.seagate.com/cda/product [...] 04,00.html

Any ideas? Apparently its been tested in 2 machines and only shows as 128GB and one of them already has a 500GB drive in there.

Please help,
PaulC2K

Appears where? The BIOS? FDISK? The OS? What OS?

Hi,

Thanks for those replies, i did spot a FAQ on this issue after posting (couldnt find an FAQ area on the seagate site from its menus) and there is a page which goes into a little detail about this issue here:
http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/ [...] rview.html

I've emailed Seagate Support to ask them if this is the case here, would the BIOS view the drive as 500gb or 128gb as the only information i've received is that which ive mentioned.
The 'customer' claims its not the bios as they already have a 500gb drive working in there. So i'd assume the bios sees it as 128gb.

Where it appears as 128GB? In BIOS or in OS? And waht OS is? If you don't answer to theese question, nobody can help you.

You can ass-u-me if you want to , but I prefer not to, if you know what I mean

It is a waste of time to answer a question when there is so much unknown.....
Maybe we should assume Nitro is stupid

If it is an issue with both OS's, make sure you've got service pack 2 installed, service pack 1 has a 128GB limit., I've also seen this problem with a Gigabyte K8N SLI board and 3 Seagate 300GB drives, it recognized all of them as 128GB drives, hooked them up to 3 other systems, same thing, had to RMA drives, very strange problem.

Install a drive over 128GB in a system running service pack 1 and see what it recognizes it as, I'll bet you can only access 128GB.

If U did format on some older system with older bios on board and U switch it on newer U will again see 128GB beacuse it is formated that way.

This above is true but meyby U have another problem

GrTz!

Put the disk on newer system and get your self a copy of norton patrition magic and sniff around to see what did U facked up.

Seems a lot of confusion here between formatting and partitioning! And NONE of this has anything to do with "low-level format". A "low-level format" these days is done only at the manufacturing site and it actually creates (by writing magnetic signals to a blank HHD) the empty sectors on each track.

The first thing a user does with a new HDD is PARTITION it. That operation creates a Master Boot Block (with a mini-OS in it that can read in a little data from the disk) and a Partition Table telling the system how this particular HDD is organized. That's things like how many partitions are on here, what size is each, where does each start, and which one is actually boot-able with an Operting System on it. The Partitioning job is done by an operating system running a program (like FDISK.exe, for example) and it can only create Partitions with HDD structures it knows how to handle. So, for example, if the HDD first was PARTITIONED using original Win XP with NO later Service Packs, it could only create partitions up to 137 GB (actually show as about 128 GB) because that OS did not know anything about LBA48. Service Pack 1 solved this, and SP2 maintained that, of course. (By the way, in the case of Win 2000, LBA48 support is included in a later SP - certanly by SP4, maybe earlier, I don't know.) And I suppose that, even if the original partitioning had been done under an XP with SP2 installed, you would have had the option to create a Partition of specified size less than the full disk.

Only AFTER the Partition has been created can you FORMAT that partition. But the size is already established - you do NOT set the size with FORMAT. So simply formatting an existing HDD Partition will not change its size.

It appears the HDD in question was Partitioned originally in a system that did not support LBA48 and drives larger than 137 GB. Even though it is now installed in a machine that does handles a 500 GB drive properly, it still has only one partition of size 137 GB to work with. The rest of the drive is simply undefined. So you should have three choices.

1. In Windows under Administrative Tools for hard drives etc, find the HDD. It should show you that it has one partition of 128 GB plus a bunch of unassigned space. You can tell it to create on this same HDD a second Partition of whatever size you like, up to a max of available space, and format it for you. It will become a third hard drive, as far as Windows is concerned. All the data on the 128 GB existing partition will still be there.

2. Alternatively, in that same place, you can tell Windows to destroy the existing partition on that drive (you will certainly LOSE all its data!). Then tell it to create a partition on the unassigned drive of whatever size you want, up to the full size. Also have it formatted. Now you will have (up to a) 500 GB drive, but it will really look like about 450 GB.

3. With the old drive installed in the new machine, use a utility from the HDD manufacturer -that's Seatools from Seagate here - to do the re-Partition and Format. Again, you will LOSE all its DATA! And again, you can specify whether to partition it into one big 500 GB drive or into several smaller partitions. One thing to watch out for: If you simply run Seagate's utilities by allowing it to boot your machine from the Seagate utility CD, that system will not know that your machines's installed version of Windows can handle large HDD's properly. By default it will refuse to make a partition larger than 137 GB to protect you from earlier OS's. So you proably should sinstall the Seagate utilities on your hard disk, then run it from there under Windows.

*if in windows*

right click on my computer --> click manage
in the new window that opens up in the left pane select storage --> disk management
in the right pane then select your drive (i'm guessing it would more than likely be DISK1 [DISK0 will be your OS in most cases])

****MAKE SURE YOU KNOW WHICH DRIVE IS THE NEW ONE AND WHICH ONE IS YOUR OS!!!!****

I will use DISK1 for arguments sake but it could be different on your system....

if under that DISK1 row you notice more then one block to the right of the disk description right click on each of the boxed (in that row) and select delete partition once you have one single block in the DISK1 row that says "unallocated space" right click on that block and select format and it will walk you through the steps on setting up a main partition and then formatting.

hope this helps!

You should be banned for advice like that. If you don't know you don't have to comment. SP2 was the likely problem.

Actually the first release of SP 1 did NOT automatically enable 48-bit LBA, although atapi.sys was updated. The registry still had to be edited when updating an existing XP install, though XP SP1 as a new install did directly provide LBA48. So it may seem to those who got the first release of SP1 that it didn't support drives larger than 137 Gigs. A subsequent SP1a had a few fixes and included default support for LBA48 even as an update. Thus both statements above are correct. I have CDs of both versions of SP1, one updates to LBA48, one doesn't.

thanks lunyone that's what I said but you said it better in a nice quick to the point quirp

Anyone mention the jumper on some HD's that will limit the drive to a certain size. Maybe he had it installed?

Mike

Thanks to all.
I was adding Hitachi 500G, with Intel D845WN chip set mother board, Winodws XP with SP3
Latest BIOS P15. but windows was showing only 128G
My Computer -> Manage -> Storage -> Disk Management.
Where as BIOS was showing 500G.

From Hitachi site came to know that it needs "Intel Application Accelerator" installed.

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/qcheck.htm#a1

After installing this, windows XP shows all 500G.