Vista cant see my wd 1.5tb drive, it only views it as 1tb

What is the max that your motherboard will handle? I know certain Dells have a max HDD capability (internal as well as external).

I'm not sure of the capacity. And yes it is a Dell XPS Dimension Desktop

I'm not sure of the capacity. And yes it is a Dell XPS Dimension Desktop

This is what I found at Dell's site: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dmag/spec...

It does not address the max HDD capacity.

The way to get info about this is to log into "support.dell.com" and then enter your Service Tag Number. Then look for upgrades to the HDD. Check and see what is the max HDD size offered. Confirm by calling Dell sales regarding HDDs for this computer. On my 10-year old Dell Dimension 4600, the max HDD size per Dell is 250 GBs. Your XPS may have a larger HDD capacity.

It is a Dell XPS 730, 3 tears old Intel core 2 quad processor. I have upgraded the bios not long ago. The trouble with dell is, unless your under warranty, they don't want to tell you anything.

Enter the Service Tag Number on "support.dell.com" - then look to upgrade the HDD. This will answer your question.

Confirm by calling Dell Sales and inquire about the possibility of installing a 1.5 TB drive from them. They will tell you if this is possible or not. If not possible, they (Dell Sales) will tell you the max capacity of HDD that the computer's motherboard will handle.

Here are the guides: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/xlob/dtg/...
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/xps730x/e...
http://support.dell.com/support/systemsinfo/documentati...

Enter the Service Tag number here in option 2: http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/DellPartsFamily.aspx...

Look for hard drive upgrades. This will give you a clue as to the largest capacity HDD that the computer will handle. (The manuals do not list this).

If you have a motherboard with an NVidia chipset, then you will need to update the drivers.

The following tech note should apply to other OSes as well as Vista.

1.5TB or larger SATA hard drive only showing 1.1TB capacity in Windows Vista [206391]:
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/searc...


Edit: The above only applies to internal drives, not external. Sorry for my error.

Thanks you guys for all your input. I tried all these methods and still had no luck. Then for some reason i looked at the part number on the hard drive itself and found it was only a 1TB!!!! Even though it was packaged in a 1.5 TB box!!!! I took it back to the retailer and found most of the drives they were selling, were incorrectly packaged!!!!!

So thanks again guys.