My PC does not recognize the full size of the HD installed

[Guest]

Hello,
I installed a 500 Gb Seagte Hard Drive in my PC, with Windows XP as OS. My system only shows a 127 GB hard drive capacity. Does anyone konws why is that happen?

 

[rolli59]

I believe you will have to service pack 1 installed to see bigger drives than 127gb. http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/hdd_lim

 

[quesionboy]

Hello,
I installed a 500 Gb Seagte Hard Drive in my PC, with Windows XP as OS. My system only shows a 127 GB hard drive capacity. Does anyone konws why is that happen?

Did you change the custer size ever? If that you'd better keep the custer size as default ( 4KB in Windows XP).
Do a fresh defragement, or run "chkdsk" command to find is there any bad sector,
note: the physical bad sectors is hard to be fixed, you'd better ask help for the OEM of the Hard drive.

 

[Paperdoc]

rolli59 is on the right track. The first version of Win XP did NOT have a feature called "48-bit LBA Support". The older (28-bit) LBA system only allows access to HDD's up to 127 GB. So when you install any HDD larger that that and Partition / Format it, that version of Win XP cannot make a Partition over 127 GB, and it will never know that the HDD is actually larger.

The "48-bit LBA Support" feature was added to Win XP in Service Pack 1 and is part of all later SP's and other later Windows versions. So if you have NO Service Packs installed, you should update your Win XP with at least one. The latest and recommended is SP3.

Once you have done this, you have a choice to make. You could leave your new HDD with its current 127 GB Partition. Then you can use Disk Management to Create and Format one (or more) additional Partitions out of the remaining Unallocated Space on the HDD. Each such Partition will be treated by Windows as a separate "drive" with its own letter name.

The alternative, which may be quite a good one for you since you have only recently installed the unit, would be to start all over on installation. This WILL destroy all data on that new 500 GB Seagate unit, so make sure anything there that you want is backed up somewhere else first! When you're ready, go into Disk Management's LOWER RIGHT pane and right-click on the existing 127 GB Partition. Delete it. Just to be sure, back out of Disk Management and reboot your machine so the Registry is updated to the non-existence of that "drive". Now go back into Disk Management. On the empty 500 GB unit that is ALL Unallocated Space, RIGHT-click on that space and choose to Create a new Partition. You can set its size to anything up to the full capacity, which will be about 465 GB. (465GB is what Windows calls a 500 GB HDD because it uses a different definition of "GB" - a separate discussion!) For options, make this a Primary Partition and it does NOT need to be bootable, since you're using it for data and your boot device is a different HDD. You may see no options for the File system, etc, so if that's the case, just run the Partition Creation task, which won't take long. When it is done, you can RIGHT-click on the newly-Created Partition and choose to Format it. NOTE that some versions of Win will combine the Format and Create Partition operations into one step; either way, the Format options are the same. Choose a File System to install - normally NTFS, unless you know there is a special reason to use FAT32. A Quick Format will do all the essential work for you in 20 to 30 minutes. Then you back out of Disk Management and check My Computer - the new huge drive should be there ready to use. On the other hand, you can do a Full Format. This will do the Quick Format first, then it will run through the entire drive and test every sector, marking any faulty ones off so that Windows never tries to use them. The process will take SEVERAL HOURS, so just let it run and be patient. On a new drive there are likely no bad sectors so this step is not completely necessary, but it is a good precaution if you have some time to wait.

Back out of Disk Management. I'd recommend rebooting to be sure the Registry is completely updated. Good luck!

 

[Paperdoc]

I just remembered an odd quirk I ran into the first time I set up a large HDD. I did have SP2 of Win XP installed. But I was not using Windows Disk Management to do the job - I was using a utility supplied by the HDD maker on a self-booting CD. I ran it from the CD. It did not have any way to check which version of XP was running, so it made the safe assumption that I did NOT have any Service Packs installed and only offered the option of a Partition up to 127 GB. I found out later that that utility will work better if it is installed on the C: drive and run under Windows.

So, IF you set up your Seagate unit by running software from a bootable CD from Seagate, maybe that's how you got your result. Anyway, my previous advice is the same. Make sure your XP is updated to SP3, the re-do the Partition and Format steps as I outlined.