Installed 300gb drive that now has 127gb

[Eddie G]

I have an IDE HDD and bought a 300gb SATA HDD that I wanted to make as my
boot drive. I installed the Sata drive first as my "d" drive and mirrored
it with XXClone. When I looked at the drive with Windows Explorer it looked
fine, so I unplugged the IDE drive and booted with the SATA drive. I
received a message "no os installed" so I re-installed Windows XP to the
SATA drive. During the install there was a 127gb partition that I had to
re-format per Windows installation. I figured it is a new drive and I can
always reinstall the software from my original IDE HDD. So I did this and
the disk booted fine (as a clean install on a new disk). Now when I go into
Windows Explorer it lists the SATA drive as only having a TOTAL of 127gb. I
re-formatted it within Windows and it is STILL 127gb. What happened to the
other 173mb and how can I get them back?

The SATA drive has no data on it now, except "system volume information" and
I really don't care what I have to do to fix this.

Thanks!

Eddie G

 

[James]

Simple...your computer's BIOS is outdated. Download an update to your BIOS
from your manufacturer's website and install it.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I have an IDE HDD and bought a 300gb SATA HDD that I wanted to make
as my boot drive. I installed the Sata drive first as my "d" drive
and mirrored it with XXClone. When I looked at the drive with
Windows Explorer it looked fine, so I unplugged the IDE drive and
booted with the SATA drive. I received a message "no os
installed" so I re-installed Windows XP to the SATA drive. During
the install there was a 127gb partition that I had to re-format per
Windows installation. I figured it is a new drive and I can always
reinstall the software from my original IDE HDD. So I did this and
the disk booted fine (as a clean install on a new disk). Now when
I go into Windows Explorer it lists the SATA drive as only having a
TOTAL of 127gb. I re-formatted it within Windows and it is STILL
127gb. What happened to the other 173mb and how can I get them
back?
The SATA drive has no data on it now, except "system volume
information" and I really don't care what I have to do to fix this.

SP1 was integrated into your Windows XP CD (media you used to install)?
Formatting NTFS..?

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I have an IDE HDD and bought a 300gb SATA HDD that I wanted to
make as my boot drive. I installed the Sata drive first as my "d"
drive and mirrored it with XXClone. When I looked at the drive
with Windows Explorer it looked fine, so I unplugged the IDE drive
and booted with the SATA drive. I received a message "no os
installed" so I re-installed Windows XP to the SATA drive. During
the install there was a 127gb partition that I had to re-format
per Windows installation. I figured it is a new drive and I can
always reinstall the software from my original IDE HDD. So I did
this and the disk booted fine (as a clean install on a new disk). Now when
I go into Windows Explorer it lists the SATA drive as
only having a TOTAL of 127gb. I re-formatted it within Windows
and it is STILL 127gb. What happened to the other 173mb and how
can I get them back?
The SATA drive has no data on it now, except "system volume
information" and I really don't care what I have to do to fix this.

Simple...your computer's BIOS is outdated. Download an update to
your BIOS from your manufacturer's website and install it.

James,

It COULD be true that the system BIOS cannot see drives larger than 128GB -
however it is more likely, in this case, the OP has a pre-SP1 installation
CD for Windows XP. If so, they can integrate SP2 into said install, burn
the result and install from scratch and they should be able to
format/utilize all their space.. Albeit NOT a full 300GB for a 300GB hard
disk drive.

The XXCLONE was destined to fail if NTFS was used.. (and I believe various
other things could make that fail too.)

 

[Eddie G]

SP1 was integrated into your Windows XP CD (media you used to install)?
Formatting NTFS..?

SP1, not SP2. I think format was NTFS...not sure. How do I find out now,
or can't I?

 

[Eddie G]

SP1 was integrated into your Windows XP CD (media you used to install)?
Formatting NTFS..?

Oh, and I have the latest BIOS.

 

[Eddie G]

SP1 was integrated into your Windows XP CD (media you used to install)?
Formatting NTFS..?

I did this and it is fixed:
Delete the partition that's on there with Windows Disk Management.
(Right-click My Computer, select Manage. Go to Disk Management, it will
show both of your hard drives, and show the 127GB partition on your 300GB
drive. Right-click the 127GB partition, and choose Delete.)