XP persists in seeing 120Gb drive as 31Gb

[Jim Schlemmer]

Hi. I put a Western Digital WD1200JB drive into my brand new HP
Pavilion a320y last night. I set it up on the 1st IDE channel as the
slave. Both it and the primart drive are ATA-100 drives with DMA
capabilities, if that matters.

Initially, I goofed and had both the cable select and slave jumpers
installed. I installed Lifeguard and went to format it but was
shocked to learn that the drive was only showing about 31Gb. XP was
showing the same. BIOS, however, thought it was a 2.1Gb drive.

Well, I finally realized that the instructions were saying either the
cable select OR master/slave jumper. Now BIOS correctly sees both
drives as 120Gb. However, XP can't be convinced that the drive is
anything but 31Gb. I've tried zapping the hardware profile in Harware
Manager, have rebooted with the drive removed and a bunch of other
things but XP still thinks it's got a 31Gb drive. Lifegaurd crashes
now, even after a fresh install, and so is useless.

Thanks for any pointers.

-jim

 

[Alvin A Brown]

Hello

Give this a try

How to Enable 48-bit Logical Block Addressing Support for
ATAPI Disk
Drives in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;303013



Alvin

 

[Yves Leclerc]

There might also be a jumper on the drive which limits the size?

Make sure that the BIOS is support 48bit LBA.

Install Xp Service Pack 1 as soon as possible. Should have large drive
support in this pack.

Y.

 

[Jim Schlemmer]

Thanks for responding, guys.

There might also be a jumper on the drive which limits the size?

Don't think so.

Make sure that the BIOS is support 48bit LBA.

Install Xp Service Pack 1 as soon as possible. Should have large drive
support in this pack.

OK, I'll look into this tonight. But the machine was built on Nov 5,
2003. Wouldn't you think that would have the latest patches and BIOS?
I mean, one of the options with this system was a bigger hard drive
-- up to 250Gb -- well over the 137Gb limite refered to in the patch.

One item I failed to mention before was that I went ahead and
formatted the drive at 32Gb or whatever Lifeguard was asking me to
format it at. So maybe I have to figure out someway to remove the
formatting info. When I try to reformat using the Explorer's
right-click drop down menu item "Format..." I can't change the disk
size from 32Gb.

-jim

 

[Pete Baker]

Jim

You're right that the 48bitLBA isn't the answer to your problems.

You've just partitioned and formatted at 32Gb.

You should be able to fix this relatively simply.

Right-click on "My Computer" and select "Manage".
Disk management is listed under Storage on the left
Select 'disk management'
The drive should appear in the right hand panel
Select the 32Gb partition and delete it.

You should then be able to partition and format to the size required (NTFS
usually).

If you need further details then there is info on installing a disk using
disk management here

http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/howto/install_xp_disk_mgmt.html

Although it is on the Seagate site the instructions should work for any
drive. Alternatively use the help files in Disk Management.

Hope that helps
Pete

 

[Yves Leclerc]

I believe that he may have originally tried to format the drive with FAT32.
Does not FAT32 limit the size?

Y.

 

[Cari MS-MVP]

Certainly does.

Cari
www.coribright.com

 

[Pete Baker]

Yves

This is why the OP should delete the partition and reformat in NTFS using
disk management with the assistance of the help files it contains.

BTW The suggestion, originally from Alvin, that this was an issue related to
a lack of *large* drive support was, I believe, totally incorrect.

Pete
------------------------------

 

[Guest]

-----Original Message-----
Hi. I put a Western Digital WD1200JB drive into my brand new HP
Pavilion a320y last night. I set it up on the 1st IDE channel as the
slave. Both it and the primart drive are ATA-100 drives with DMA
capabilities, if that matters.

Initially, I goofed and had both the cable select and slave jumpers
installed. I installed Lifeguard and went to format it but was
shocked to learn that the drive was only showing about 31Gb. XP was
showing the same. BIOS, however, thought it was a 2.1Gb drive.

Well, I finally realized that the instructions were saying either the
cable select OR master/slave jumper. Now BIOS correctly sees both
drives as 120Gb. However, XP can't be convinced that the drive is
anything but 31Gb. I've tried zapping the hardware profile in Harware
Manager, have rebooted with the drive removed and a bunch of other
things but XP still thinks it's got a 31Gb drive. Lifegaurd crashes
now, even after a fresh install, and so is useless.

Thanks for any pointers.

-jim
.
Jim, I'm an ametuer, but I had the same problem with my

Maxtor drive. I solved the problem by removing the jumper
from the drive. The Jumper was telling the computer to
make my drive size 30gig, not my BIOS.

 

[Jim Schlemmer]

You should be able to fix this relatively simply.

Right-click on "My Computer" and select "Manage".
Disk management is listed under Storage on the left
Select 'disk management'
The drive should appear in the right hand panel
Select the 32Gb partition and delete it.

You should then be able to partition and format to the size required (NTFS
usually).

Thanks, Pete. That did it. Formatting now...

-jim

 

[Ralph]

Jim,
Same thing happened to me recently and it was my
partition size. When I installed an OS on the new 120 gig
HD I Gave it 38 gig to work with and left the rest
unallocated. XP then saw the HD as 38 gig.
Hope this helped.
Ralph

 

[Pete Baker]

Excellent news Jim...

and thanks for posting an update.

Pete
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