LOST HARD DRIVE SIZE

I HAVE A MAXTOR SATA/150 300 GIG AND I LOST ABOUT 21 GIG, AND WHENEVER I FORMAT THE WHOLE DRIVE IT ONLY SHOWS 279 GIG MAX TO FORMAT. BEFORE I HAVE THE WHOLE 300 BUT AFTER FORMATTING 3X, IT WENT DOWN TO 279. BY THE WAY, THE 279. ITS 279 PERIOD, I CAN'T MAKE IT SMALL OR BIGGER THAN THAT. MEANING, I CAN ONLY MAKE ONE PARTITION IN THIS HD... I JUST DON'T KNOW WHAT MY RETARTED COUSIN DID TO IT, HE WENT TO COLLEGE FOR COMPUTER AND HE CAN'T DO ANYTHING RIGHT FOR THIS P.C.
ALSO, WHENEVER I CHECK THE HD IT SAID ITS ON GOOD CONDITION NO PROBLEM AT ALL, IT SHOWS THE WHOLE 300 GIG BUT ONLY 279 PARTITION..
I ALSO GOT A PARTITION MAGIC AND TRIED TO USED IT TO RESIZE THE HD BUT IT ONLY GAVE ME 279 MAX BUT THIS TIME I CAN MAKE IT SMALLER . I'D LIKE TO GET THE WHOLE 300, CAN ANYBODY TELL ME HOW TO MAKE THIS RIGHT ??? THX..

You'll never get 300 gig out of that drive due to the different ways companies and computers read 1 gig. If you do get a 300 gig parition I'll sell my beach front property in Arizona!

Companies "sell" 1 gig as 1,000,000,000 bytes, Computers read it as 1,073,741,824 bytes or 1,024 mega bytes.
279 gig is the correct size for a formatted 300 gig drive.

OK,,, TELL ME THIS, 1ST TIME I GOT A PROBLEM ON THIS I ONLY GOT 150 GIG OUT OF 300 GIG. WHAT MY COUSIN DID, HE TOOK THE HDD AND REFORMAT IT ON A DIFFERRENT COMPUTER. THEN, I GOT A 279 GIG, PLUS, THAT'S THE ONLY OPTION THAT IS GIVING ME. I CAN'T GO DOWN OR HIGHER THAN THAT, JUST IN CASE I WANT TO PUT TWO PARTITION... DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE PROBLEM IM TRYING TO TELL YOU ?

150Gb was the limit for certain installations of windows. By reformatting on another machine he got past this for you.

When you format it, either use the tools that you can get from the drives manufacturer, or use Fdisk, or use control plan> admin tools> computer management > storage to partition and format it, or use partition magic.

By the way, the caps lock key is the one above the left hand shift key. And the enter key for paragraphs is above the right hand shift key.

As stated before 279Gig is the max you will get out of a 300Gig drive - I won't rehash the marketing spin on 'GB' or 'MB'.

The likely reason that the 300GB drive originally formatted on your cousin's computer is that your cousin likely does not keep up with the times in terms of hardware or operating systems. There must have been a limiting factor in his system which kept the OS or Drive controller from recognizing a drive over 150GB.

Cheers.

Hmmm.... STOP YELLING!
Now try going maxtors website and download the drivers for your HD. Then try to see if that helps.
You can reformat with the new driver.
Update XP.
Check to make sure that the drive is not partitioned off into smaller peaces.
Do the long format not the quick one.

If that does not help then you have been a victim of a HD switch!
In fact I bet that is what he did!!! He stole your larger HD and replaced it with his smaller HD

IM NOT YELLING, I CAN SEE BETTER IF I TYPE IT LIKE THIS, THX. FOR ALL THE RESPONSE. I WILL GO TO MAXTOR WEB SITE AND LOOK FOR THE DRIVER... BY THE WAY, IT WAS ON MY PC ALL ALONG, THEN STARTED HAVING PROBLEMS 300 TO 150 THEN HE REFORMATTED TO HIS P.C. THEN, I GOT 279 WITH NO CHOICE HOW MUCH OR HOW LITTLE I WANT MY HDD.. THX AGAIN

I have a 250 Gb hard drive but I only see a max of 231.

Its perfectly normal.

Its really not possible to get the full 300. you might be able to get it closer to 300, but not exactly at 300.

Everyone will interpret it as yelling, so you are yelling. There are better ways to see text better in browsers. One easy way is to hold down CTRL and press the "+/=" key (CTRL and numeric keypad "+" also works); this will increase the font size. To make the font get smaller, hold down CTRL and press either "-" key.