Seagate Momentus 160GB showed as 130GB by Windows XP SP3

A

Alessandro

Hi all
and sorry for duplicated message in italian too.

I have changed laptop hd (Acer Travelmate 8006 lmi) buying Seagate Momentus
5400 rpm 160GB

Installing Windows XP SP1, it was recognized as 130GB hd, so I made upgrade
to SP3, updating all drivers, but hd size remained the same.

I tried also creating a smaller partition, in order to have 2 partitions
(primary as 35GB and extended as 100GB). Anyway there isn't any not
allocated space more and so I'm losing about 30GB out of 160GB.

What do you suggest to do ??
I think I'll have to update bios (I wanted to skip it but I think now it
will be a must ... ;))

At the moment there is a Phoenix version 3A15, but it doesn't show any
detail about hd capacity ...

Thanks a lot,
Ale
 
M

meow2222

Alessandro said:
Hi all
and sorry for duplicated message in italian too.

I have changed laptop hd (Acer Travelmate 8006 lmi) buying Seagate Momentus
5400 rpm 160GB

Installing Windows XP SP1, it was recognized as 130GB hd, so I made upgrade
to SP3, updating all drivers, but hd size remained the same.

I tried also creating a smaller partition, in order to have 2 partitions
(primary as 35GB and extended as 100GB). Anyway there isn't any not
allocated space more and so I'm losing about 30GB out of 160GB.

What do you suggest to do ??
I think I'll have to update bios (I wanted to skip it but I think now it
will be a must ... ;))

At the moment there is a Phoenix version 3A15, but it doesn't show any
detail about hd capacity ...

Thanks a lot,
Ale
Click to expand...

drive capacity is rated in GiB not Gb, and no surprise they ain't the
same. Also some of the capacity is taken up by the file system, so
what you end up is always a bit less than it says on the box. Some
filesystems take up more of the space than others.


NT
 
M

Man-wai Chang ToDie (33.6k)

Alessandro said:
Hi all
and sorry for duplicated message in italian too.

I have changed laptop hd (Acer Travelmate 8006 lmi) buying Seagate Momentus
5400 rpm 160GB

Installing Windows XP SP1, it was recognized as 130GB hd, so I made upgrade
to SP3, updating all drivers, but hd size remained the same.

I tried also creating a smaller partition, in order to have 2 partitions
(primary as 35GB and extended as 100GB). Anyway there isn't any not
allocated space more and so I'm losing about 30GB out of 160GB.
Click to expand...

The actual capacity = 160x1000/1024 G

1000 is used by the marketing, 1024 is used by the OS.

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http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_pubsvc/page_socsecu/sub_addressesa
 
T

TVeblen

Man-wai Chang ToDie (33.6k) said:
The actual capacity = 160x1000/1024 G

1000 is used by the marketing, 1024 is used by the OS.
Click to expand...

The Os should see 149.1 GB on a 160GB Hard drive. So that doesn't explain
why he only sees 130.

OP: As said before, the hard drive manufacturers market their drives by the
Byte, so a drive that contains 160,000,000,000 bytes they call a 160GB
drive. But computers run on a binary system so the OS counts each
1,073,741,824 Bytes as a GB. So you "lose" that 7% overhead to marketing.
 
T

TVeblen

TVeblen said:
The Os should see 149.1 GB on a 160GB Hard drive. So that doesn't explain
why he only sees 130.

OP: As said before, the hard drive manufacturers market their drives by
the Byte, so a drive that contains 160,000,000,000 bytes they call a 160GB
drive. But computers run on a binary system so the OS counts each
1,073,741,824 Bytes as a GB. So you "lose" that 7% overhead to marketing.
Click to expand...
Check this out:
http://www.computing.net/answers/windows-xp/130gb-hard-drive-limit/155757.html

http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/52464/

http://www.48bitlba.com/faq.htm
 
A

Alessandro

The Os should see 149.1 GB on a 160GB Hard drive. So that doesn't explain
why he only sees 130.
Click to expand...

Hi,
thanks for the answers.

1) Analyzing the issue ad SO level, I have upgraded to XP SP3 and this is
LBA 48bit compliance

2) I have updated bios Phoenix to last version found on acer site for
trvelmate 8006 lmi (2005 year): 3A20.
I guess it should be LBA 48 bit compliance

3) I believe there is some issue about ATA controller which could not
support hdd with size more than 137GB.

So I think I'll keep it at 137GB losing about 20GB ...

Ale
 
T

TVeblen

Alessandro said:
Hi,
thanks for the answers.

1) Analyzing the issue ad SO level, I have upgraded to XP SP3 and this is
LBA 48bit compliance

2) I have updated bios Phoenix to last version found on acer site for
trvelmate 8006 lmi (2005 year): 3A20.
I guess it should be LBA 48 bit compliance

3) I believe there is some issue about ATA controller which could not
support hdd with size more than 137GB.

So I think I'll keep it at 137GB losing about 20GB ...
Click to expand...

Have tried to use Windows XP Disk Management to get the rest of the drive
recognized by the OS?
Start > Programs > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk
Management
 
C

Conor

Alessandro said:
Hi,
thanks for the answers.

1) Analyzing the issue ad SO level, I have upgraded to XP SP3 and this is
LBA 48bit compliance
Click to expand...

Yes but the original partition was created with an OS that was no LBA48
compatible. You need to use a third party partition tool to extend it
such as Partition Magic.
 
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