misreported hard drive size

[Aimee D]

i'm posting again because i haven't gotten a response yet
from an earlier post.

Windows XP setup only sees 8gb of my new 56gb hard drive.
The computer is brand new (Athlon xp 2600, Abit nf7-s
motherboard, 256 mb ram), and i have updated to the latest
bios. The bios sees the correct size for this hard drive,
so I don't think its the hardware causing the problem.
Just out of curiosity, I installed Windows ME on it and it
sees the whole hard drive. Also installed Windows 98, and
it also saw the whole hard drive....... So why doesn't
Windows XP see the whole drive also???????

I deleted all partitions prior to inserting the XP cd and
booted off of that. That way I knew I had a 'clean' hard
drive before installing.

is it possible my hard drive isn't compatible with windows
xp?

 

[Guest]

When you loaded XP did you format the drive? What did XP
report the size of the empty partition to be at that time?

 

[Aimee D]

Thanks for your responses..... The HDD is an MDT (I think
its a Western Digital spin-off or something because on
MDT's website you can download a disk utility that's
actually a Western Digital program). Not a Maxtor.

The BIOS is fully updated to latest version.... and the
BIOS reports the HDD's full size.

--When you loaded XP did you format the drive? What did XP
report the size of the empty partition to be at that time?

I've tried loading up XP several different ways.....
unformatted, formatted, unpartitioned, partititoned (both
NFTS and FAT32) XP reports the size of the partition (or
unpartitioned space) as 8056 MB..... well short of the
56000 MB I'm supposed to have.

 

[Alex Nichol]

--When you loaded XP did you format the drive? What did XP
report the size of the empty partition to be at that time?

I've tried loading up XP several different ways.....
unformatted, formatted, unpartitioned, partititoned (both
NFTS and FAT32) XP reports the size of the partition (or
unpartitioned space) as 8056 MB..... well short of the
56000 MB I'm supposed to have.

Either Start over. Boot the XP CD direct. Enter Setup, and after the
license agreement take New Install. When it asks you to confirm where,
hit ESC; select and delete the current partition and make a new RAW one
to be formatted at the next stage, which you should be able to specify
as larger.

But I would myself not use the whole of a 56 GB disk as a single
partition. I'd leave the system on 8GB (which is quite suitable for
system and programs), and in Control Panel - Admin Tools - Computer
Management, select Disk Management and look lower right for the graphic
of the drive. There r-click in the Unallocated space and 'Create
partition' to use the rest. Carry on to format it, then reboot so it is
in use properly.

Then move My Documents over to that : OPen a My Computer window on
C:\Documents and Settings\you
to show My Documents, and another on the other 'drive' letter. Then
with the*right* mouse button down, drag the My Documents across, and on
release take 'Move* here. Do the same with other 'My' whatever folders