30GB Hard Drive shows up as 12.1GB - Please Help!!

[Byl''s HDD Blues]

Question
I have a 30 GB HDD (Seagate) in an Athlon XP 2200+ running WXP Pro with
1.25
GB of RAM.

All is well with the system except yesterday when I got a notice saying that
I was running out of disk space (I've only got 10.8 GB on the drive).

I went to "My Computer" and the HDD shows up as being only 12.1 GB. I then
right clicked the HDD icon and the properties graphically showed the same
thing -- only 1.2 GB of space left!

I checked Disk Management and graphically (on the lower pane) it shows the
drive to be 27.95 GB, (which is more in line with a 30GB HDD). It shows the
partition is NTFS and "Healthy" with no unallocated space.

However, on the upper pane, it details the HDD as 12.2 GB with only 1.2 GB
of space left on it ?!?!?

Going to the device manager and then the properties of the HDD shows the
capacity as 28,616 MB (28 or so GB) but in the lower part of the display, it
states the drive is 12,488 MB (about 12GB or so).

I downloaded and installed HD Tune 2.55 and it tested the ST330620A Drive as
28,615 MB (~30GB) but a 98.61% usage (again, I only have 10.8 GB on the
drive). All the tests performed by HD Tune show no errors or problems with
the drive.

Can anyone please shed some light on this and how to get WXP Pro to show the
correct HDD Size?

This install is otherwise very stable and satisfactory.

I had installed SP-3 on it 2 or 3 weeks ago and I speculated that maybe
that had caused the issue as I had not noticed it before. I uninstalled SP-3,
but it did not correct this issue. All is otherwise fine with the machine.
Please help!!

 

[RJK]

Question
I have a 30 GB HDD (Seagate) in an Athlon XP 2200+ running WXP Pro with
1.25
GB of RAM.

All is well with the system except yesterday when I got a notice saying
that
I was running out of disk space (I've only got 10.8 GB on the drive).

Have you checked in bios that the hd size is being correctly identified ?

i.e. ...and also check all other bios settings - in case the bios has
"bombed out" and dropped back to "failsafe" default settings.

....and have you run a "check the disk for errors" ?

regards, Richard

 

[30GB Hard Drive shows up as 12.1GB - Ple]

Have you checked in bios that the hd size is being correctly identified ?

i.e. ...and also check all other bios settings - in case the bios has
"bombed out" and dropped back to "failsafe" default settings.

....and have you run a "check the disk for errors" ?

regards, Richard

Hi Richard,

Thanks for your speedy reply! Yes, BIOS shows it as a 30 GB HDD and all
settings are as they should be. Weird, isn't it?

Any other ideas?

Byl

 

[smlunatick]

Hi Richard,

Thanks for your speedy reply! Yes, BIOS shows it as a 30 GB HDD and all
settings are as they should be. Weird, isn't it?

Any other ideas?

Byl

Sounds like you might have a major problem on the drive. BIOS only
reads the drive's controller chips, for it's access specs. The boot
sector or MFT might be becoming un-reliable and you are possibly
having a failing drive.

 

[Anthony Buckland]

Hi Richard,

Thanks for your speedy reply! Yes, BIOS shows it as a 30 GB HDD and all
settings are as they should be. Weird, isn't it?

Any other ideas?

Byl

Sounds like you might have a major problem on the drive. BIOS only
reads the drive's controller chips, for it's access specs. The boot
sector or MFT might be becoming un-reliable and you are possibly
having a failing drive.

Sounds like a great time, before the feces hits the distributor,
to get a much bigger drive as a replacement. 100Gby is really
cheap, and 200 reasonable (somebody will chime in and say 300).

Even sooner, create a reliable total backup on external media
(I recommend Acronis TI, but that's because I've used it for so
long and done actual total recoveries), if you don't have one
already.