20Gb HD only seen as 8Gb!

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Paula

I have just installed a second hard drive in my Windows
2000 system - 20Gb Maxtor Fireball 3 hard drive
(2F020J0). The drive is set up OK as 20Gb in CMOS but in
Windows Disk Management it's only 8Gb! I can format it
and use it as 8Gb with no problems, but it's a 20Gb drive -
so why doesn't Windows see this? I've made sure that
the latest driver is installed. Any suggestions very
welcome.

Thanks for any help in advance.

Paula
 
Paula said:
I have just installed a second hard drive in my Windows
2000 system - 20Gb Maxtor Fireball 3 hard drive
(2F020J0). The drive is set up OK as 20Gb in CMOS but in
Windows Disk Management it's only 8Gb! I can format it
and use it as 8Gb with no problems, but it's a 20Gb drive -
so why doesn't Windows see this? I've made sure that
the latest driver is installed. Any suggestions very
welcome.

Thanks for any help in advance.

Paula
Click to expand...

Most likely cause is that your computer's BIOS does not support hard
drives larger than 8.4 gb. How big is the existing hard drive?

Check with the computer/motherboard manufacturer's web site for a
possible BIOS update that may correct this problem. If not then your
next best alternative is to install BIOS overlay software from the
hard drive manufacturer (MaxBlast) which will load at bootup and allow
you to use the full capacity of the drive.

Good luck



Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."
 
Thanks for your prompt response. The existing hard drive
is 20Gb so the BIOS must support larger hard drives. Any
other suggestions?

I did still try to find a BIOS update on the Internet but
haven't found the right one for my BIOS yet.
 
The bios update should be sourced from either yr pc manu.site or the mobo
site.
If its a laptop generally the pc site.
 
Umm, do you have any unallocated space? It sounds like you have an 8 GB
partition and the rest is unallocated. Right Click on My Computer, click
Manage, click Disk Management. What does it say for your Disk? It is
odd that at the POST it only shows 8GB. You may also want to check the
settings you have chosen for it.
 
-----Original Message-----
I have just installed a second hard drive in my Windows
2000 system - 20Gb Maxtor Fireball 3 hard drive
(2F020J0). The drive is set up OK as 20Gb in CMOS but in
Windows Disk Management it's only 8Gb! I can format it
and use it as 8Gb with no problems, but it's a 20Gb drive -
so why doesn't Windows see this? I've made sure that
the latest driver is installed. Any suggestions very
welcome.

Thanks for any help in advance.

Paula
.
well go back into Disk Management, right click your new
Click to expand...
drive and choose delete partition, then right click again
and choose new partition, follow the wizard,but when it
asks you what size put in 13,000,then follow the rest of
the wizard,then you should see formatting with a percent,
then a black space to the right of it, right click that
blank space and choose new partition,just follow the
wizard it should fill in the space of that part of the
drive with the remaining Gigs, then just finish the
wizard and make sure to give them drive letters, then
wait for them to format then restart windows,this should
work tell me whether it does or not.

Justin
 
The hard drive shows as 20Gb in CMOS and through boot up,
it's only once Windows has loaded that it's only 8Gb. In
Disk Management it's only 8Gb with nothing else showing
either allocated or unallocated. Have downloaded
MaxBlast and installed onto FD but it's not booting from
it (think the FD is dodgy!) Haven't investigated this
any more as I'm sure the BIOS is not where the problem is
or surely it would not be showing as 20Gb in CMOS? My
first hard drive is 20Gb and this works fine. I have 3
IDE devices now; original 20Gb HD, DVD drive and this new
20Gb HD. My motherboard manual says can have up to 4 IDE
devices so this should be OK. BIOS is Award v4.51PG.
Any suggestions greatly appreciated.
 
What format does it say the hard drive is in? FAT, FAT32, or NTFS? Try
converting it to NTFS (will not hurt anything at all), by clicking
Start-All Programs-Accessories-System Tools-Convert to NTFS
 
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