Where did my other 10 GB get to???

[Guest]

I just reinstalled Win XP Home on a Maxstor 40GB IDE hard disk. This disk was
formatted 39GB FAT32 as a secondary disk before the reinstall. I deleted all
partitions and let WinXP Installer format it as NTFS in the setup. Now it's
only 30 GB!!! Where has the other 10GB gone, and how can I get it back????

Confused, of Brisbane...

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Tony.

You haven't told us how you went about this project. I would have done it
like this...

Check jumpers and cables and then physically install the 40 GB IDE Maxtor as
primary master - and the ONLY HDD in the computer for now. Then boot from
the WinXP CD-ROM and run Setup, accepting its offer to remove all existing
partitions and then create a single new one, using the whole disk, and
format it NTFS. Is this what you did?

Or did you boot from an MS-DOS floppy and use FDISK and Format.com? Or did
you use some other method?

Formatting does not determine the size of a volume. That is determined by
FDISK or WinXP Setup (or Disk Management) when it creates the volume, before
it is formatted. When WinXP Setup offers to repartition, it defaults to
using the whole HDD, unless you specify a smaller size. Does that match
your experience?

RC

 

[Bob Willard]

I just reinstalled Win XP Home on a Maxstor 40GB IDE hard disk. This disk was
formatted 39GB FAT32 as a secondary disk before the reinstall. I deleted all
partitions and let WinXP Installer format it as NTFS in the setup. Now it's
only 30 GB!!! Where has the other 10GB gone, and how can I get it back????

Confused, of Brisbane...

The XP CD will only format a HD for FAT32 up to 32GB. While you could
split that HD into two parts, each <32GB, or you could use FDISK from a
W9x boot disk to create a single 40GB FAT32 part., I suggest using a
single part. and formatting it as NTFS, which is more robust than FAT32.

 

[null]

The XP CD will only format a HD for FAT32 up to 32GB. While you could
split that HD into two parts, each <32GB, or you could use FDISK from a
W9x boot disk to create a single 40GB FAT32 part., I suggest using a
single part. and formatting it as NTFS, which is more robust than FAT32.

He says he did format it as NTFS.

--
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of this message.

 

[Guest]

Hi, and thanks for replying. I thought I did say that I deleted the existing
FAT32 partitions using Partition Manager 8 before starting the install. I
then rejumpered the disk as master (alone) and let WinXP set up both the
partitioning and formatting (NTFS). Beyond that, I just accepted all the
defaults during install.

I assumed that as my BIOS has recognised the disk as 40 GB in slave, it
would do so in master. I have not checked that yet, but will when I get home
tonight. One reason I did it that way was that the HDD had a 7MB unallocated
space at the front that I could not remove. That 7MB is now after the main
partition, by the way.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for replying, Bob. The answer to your question is in my original post
and also in my reply to R.C. White above. I did choose NTFS formatting.

Tony

 

[Bob Willard]

Thanks for replying, Bob. The answer to your question is in my original post
and also in my reply to R.C. White above. I did choose NTFS formatting.

Tony

:

Sorry, I didn't read carefully.

There are several common causes of "lost" HD space.

1. HD vendors and M$ disagree on how many Bs are in a GB, since HD vendors use
decimal def's and M$ uses binary def's. To avoid tripping over this debate,
bring up explorer and rclick on the HD, then click on Properties -- that will
induce XP to display the HD's capacity in Bs and in GBs, so you should see
something like 40,000,000,000 bytes *and* 37.2 GBs.

2. If you are adding up space allocated to files and available space and
wondering where the missing piece went, then remember to make all files
(including hidden and system) files visible so they can be counted. And,
if you use XP's System Restore feature, count that (usually ~15%) chunk.

3. It is easy to mis-partition and not notice it. To see how your HD is
part'ed, click on Start/Settings/ControlPanel/AdminTools/ComputerManagement,
then on Storage/DiskManagement -- that will bring up a graphical display of
the parts of your HD.