Is it normal for 160Gb disk to be seen as 131070mb?

[Guest]

Hi,

I have a very very quick question.

On setting up a new PC with an XP home (original no service packs) CD, and
on a 160gb disk, when I have to opportunity to selct or creat partitions, it
says my hard disk is only 131070mb Disk 0.

This means I have lost 30Gb of space?

I thought only 10% maximum disk space is unusable, but this seems quite
high, is it normal ?

Many thanks

Rajen

 

[smlunatick]

Hi,

I have a very very quick question.

On setting up a new PC with an XP home (original no service packs) CD, and
on a 160gb disk, when I have to opportunity to selct or creat partitions, it
says my hard disk is only 131070mb Disk 0.

This means I have lost 30Gb of space?

I thought only 10% maximum disk space is unusable, but this seems quite
high, is it normal ?

Many thanks

Rajen

Original XP (Home or Pro, no service packs) can not detect hard drives
greater than the size mentioned. You need to re-format with at least
with Service Pack 1. FIf you do not have a install CD with a Service
Pack "integrated" into it, search the Internet for steps how to
"slipstream" a Service Pack onto your install CD.

BTW: You can not "expand" partitions in XP. Once you install a
Service Pack, locate a utility like Partition Magic and reclaim the
"missing" space.

 

[Bob Knowlden]

Microsoft claims that you need SP1 or later for LBA48 support.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303013/en-us

If you only have access to a pre-SP1 XP installation CD, I recommend
preparing a new CD with SP1 (or better, SP2) "slipstreamed" onto it. I have
never used Autostreamer, but it is supposed to make the process simple.


Return address scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.

 

[Richard in AZ]

Hi,

I have a very very quick question.

On setting up a new PC with an XP home (original no service packs) CD, and
on a 160gb disk, when I have to opportunity to selct or creat partitions, it
says my hard disk is only 131070mb Disk 0.

This means I have lost 30Gb of space?

I thought only 10% maximum disk space is unusable, but this seems quite
high, is it normal ?

Many thanks

Rajen

Because the Disk Manufacturer and Windows use two different methods of measuring a gigabyte, you get
different values.
The manufacturer uses one 1,000,000,000 bytes as a gigabyte, but windows uses 1,073,741,824 bytes as
a gigabyte (2 to the 30th power). This means that windows sees a 160 GB drive as a 149 GB. Now
take off some over-head for the boot sector, etc. and you may be down to your 131 GB listed.

 

[GreenieLeBrun]

Hi,

I have a very very quick question.

On setting up a new PC with an XP home (original no service packs)
CD, and on a 160gb disk, when I have to opportunity to selct or creat
partitions, it says my hard disk is only 131070mb Disk 0.

This means I have lost 30Gb of space?

I thought only 10% maximum disk space is unusable, but this seems
quite high, is it normal ?

Many thanks

Rajen

You need to slipstream your XP CD to SP2 to avoid this limitation.

Slipstreamed Windows XP CD Using SP2
http://www.theeldergeek.com/slipstreamed_xpsp2_cd.htm

How to use AutoStreamer to Slipstream Windows XP Service Pack 2
http://www.simplyguides.net/guides/using_autostreamer/using_autostreamer.html

Combining Windows XP with Service Pack 2 for reinstallation (Part 1:
Introduction)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/894947/

Windows XP Service Pack 2 - Direct Download
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...BE-3B8E-4F30-8245-9E368D3CDB5A&displaylang=en
or http://tinyurl.com/5bobl

You may also like to look at nLite ( http://www.nliteos.com/index.html )
and especially RyanVM's Windows XP Post-SP2 Update Pack
(http://www.ryanvm.net/msfn/updatepack.html)