300GB Hardrive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Joel Guzman
  • Start date Start date
J

Joel Guzman

I bought a 300 GB hard drive and i went to installd XP pro, and now is only
reading 125GB.

help please
 
Joel Guzman said:
I bought a 300 GB hard drive and i went to installd XP pro, and now is only
reading 125GB.

help please
Click to expand...

Joel:
The likelihood is that your Windows XP OS does not include either SP1 or
SP2. In order for the system to recognize the *full* capacity of your 300 GB
hard drive (actually about 280 GB or so in binary terms), the XP OS must
include SP1 or SP2. The other requirement is that your motherboard support
large-capacity hard drives, that is, drives > 137 GB (about 125 GB as you've
indicated). We'll assume your motherboard supports those large-capacity
drives, so that you need only to install SP1 or preferably SP2 on your
system. It will mean that the additional disk space recognized by the system
after you've installed SP1/SP2 will have to be partitioned/formatted, so
that you'll have at least two partitions on your 300 GB HD.
Anna
 
Thanks all,

Ok, i'm at work right now, i installed XP on it last week, i believe i did
all updates including the SPs. So if still reading just 125 that means i
have another 175GBs unused which i could user for another partition.
Partition Magic would do the job right?
 
Maybe i wasn't that clear, sorry.

I installed this 300GB hard drive from scratch. i took the old one out,
booted the pc with the XP pro cd and installed it from scratch.
when it showed me the partition it read 125GB only.
maybe this will clear things up a little. so that meant that i had to intall
XP first and then the updates with the latest service packs. i did all that
and is still 125GBs.

is this clearer?
 
Joel,

Go to Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management.

In computer management go to storage > disk management.

You should there see the unpartitioned space left on the hard drive. If you
don't then you need to get a BIOS upgrade from your motherboard manufacturer.
If you do then you can do this 1 of 2 ways if you do have partition magic
you can format the unpartitioned space and then conjoin the 2 partitions into
1 big partitions. If not then you can just format the unpartitioned space
and have a 2nd partition. But be sure to use this partition. I have seen
many computers come in with errors saying that the hard drive is full and its
because they have everything on the primary partition and NOTHING on the
secondary. That is the reason I would just choose to do 1 large partition
rather than 2 or more. Good Luck

Joe

Kemco IT Pro
 
Jim said:
Windows XP can't see a harddrive that large by default.
Click to expand...


That's not correct. Windows XP can see such a drive without a problem as
long as it is at SP1 or SP2 level. Only the original release of XP could
not.

In addition to needing SP1 or SP2, you also need a motherboard (or add-in
controller card) that supports 48-bit LBA. Almost all recent motheboards do,
but some older ones may not.
 
=?Utf-8?B?S2VtY28=?= said:
and have a 2nd partition. But be sure to use this partition. I have seen
many computers come in with errors saying that the hard drive is full and its
because they have everything on the primary partition and NOTHING on the
secondary. That is the reason I would just choose to do 1 large partition
rather than 2 or more. Good Luck
Click to expand...

Grin. I often have the good fortune to install customer purchased second
hard drives they buy because they need more storage space. Yes it's true
many people fail to use it and continue to install apps to the default
folder on C:. Then you get a phone call a week or two later with a
confused customer on the line.

The other variable is kids. Dad can tell his teens to install/save to
drive D: from now on but Mr./Mrs. teen just clicks and go asap to get
that new warez on they got from a file share.
 
Thanks guys,

I went to Disk Management and i see 155GB of unpartioned space. I guess i'll
use magic partition to put it all in one big 300GB hard drive if not i just
do another partition.
 
If you do then you can do this 1 of 2 ways if you do have partition magic

What is "partition magic"?
 
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