New Hard Drive and it only show it as a 127gb when it a 250gb

[Guest]

OK i got a new western digital hard drive and i installed xp pro sp1 and sp2
but when im in "my comuter" screen and i click on the C drive it show it as
only being 127gb in size instead of 250gb. what do i need to do to fix this
without haveing to reinstall the operating system.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

OK i got a new western digital hard drive and i installed xp pro sp1
and sp2 but when im in "my comuter" screen and i click on the C drive
it show it as only being 127gb in size instead of 250gb. what do i
need to do to fix this without haveing to reinstall the operating
system.

You need two things to support a drive that large:

1. A motherboard with a BIOS and controller that supports 48-bit LBA (or
alternatively, an add-in controller card that does).

2. At least SP1 of Windows XP.

Since you meet criterion 2, it may be that you don't meet number 1.

 

[Jon]

OK i got a new western digital hard drive and i installed xp pro sp1 and
sp2
but when im in "my comuter" screen and i click on the C drive it show it
as
only being 127gb in size instead of 250gb. what do i need to do to fix
this
without haveing to reinstall the operating system.

Have a look in Disk Management
(start > run > diskmgmt.msc)
to see if there's any free unformatted space on the drive, after your c
drive

Jon

 

[Travis King]

See if you can update the BIOS on the computer you've got. That should be
able to get it going. Refer to your motherboard's website to learn how.

 

[Guest]

You need two things to support a drive that large:

1. A motherboard with a BIOS and controller that supports 48-bit LBA (or
alternatively, an add-in controller card that does).

2. At least SP1 of Windows XP.

Since you meet criterion 2, it may be that you don't meet number 1.

--
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
Please reply to the newsgroup


Ok well im not sure what bios i would need for my board im using a MSI K8N Neo4 f mb. Its an SATA hard drive if that helps any.

 

[Travis King]

http://www.msicomputer.com/support/bios_result.asp
I'd go with the latest BIOS. If updating the BIOS doesn't work, I don't
know what to tell you. MAKE SURE YOU DO NOT SHUT DOWN YOUR COMPUTER WHEN
UPDATING THE BIOS OR YOU'LL HAVE A VERY SERIOUS PROBLEM.

 

[Travis King]

I'm thinking from past experiences with MSI mobo's you should be able to
update the BIOS from within Windows if you have the software for it
installed that came with your motherboard.

 

[Guest]

See if you can update the BIOS on the computer you've got. That should be
able to get it going. Refer to your motherboard's website to learn how.



ok ill try updating the bios and in diskmanagement it says there is 104.89 unallocated and the other part is the 127 marked a (C

 

[Ron Sommer]

Why do you want to update the Bios?
Have you looked to see what size it is reporting on the drive?
If you have 104.89 unallocated and 127 in C, then your Bios is reporting the
full size of the disk.

Make another partition on the unallocated space.

 

[Travis King]

Since you are seeing quite a bit of space unallocated in there, your BIOS is
probably fine, so if you haven't started updating the BIOS yet, don't. Like
Ron said, partition it.

 

[Ron Sommer]

I can't imagine a computer that uses SATA drives having a BIOS that does not
recognize drives over 127 GB.

 

[Anna]

OK i got a new western digital hard drive and i installed xp pro sp1 and
sp2
but when im in "my comuter" screen and i click on the C drive it show it
as
only being 127gb in size instead of 250gb. what do i need to do to fix
this
without haveing to reinstall the operating system.

The OP later adds...

Ok well im not sure what bios i would need for my board im using a MSI K8N
Neo4 f mb. Its an SATA hard drive if that helps any.

ok ill try updating the bios and in diskmanagement it says there is 104.89
unallocated and the other part is the 127 marked a (C

Hummerh2:
As you've been told, there's no reason to update your BIOS since your
motherboard supports large-capacity disks, i.e., drives > 137 GB (roughly
128 GB binary). You can, of course, use the Disk Management utility to
partition/format that unallocated space so that you can use it. That, of
course, means that you will have a minimum of two partitions. If you can
live with that, so be it.

Out of curiosity, just one question...

When you installed the WD 250 GB HD, was SP1 and/or SP2 already installed to
your XP OS or did you install SP1/SP2 *after* the drive was installed? If
the latter, that would account for the system originally recognizing only
128 GB (approx.) of the drive's capacity.
Anna