won;t recognize hard drive size Win XP Home

[Martin Morales]

I have a 60 gig hard drive and it only recognizes 44.7 g
of it.
I have a compaq presario 5352 that came with win 98, and
I have just updated to win XP home edition; only have 191
mgb of ram.
The system bios seems to be from Oct. 2000.; which might
be the problem, but I don't know which Bios or its
version to use for update...
Thanks,
Martin

 

[Richard Wolford]

Your BIOS version isn't going to help with an update, you
need to get the brand name, model number and revision
number of your motherboard. MB manufacturers will modify
the BIOS to suit their needs, so a company like AMI won't
give you a new version since it can have very obvious
problems on a mainboard.

And yes, you are probably correct about the BIOS being the
culprit, or at least that's a good start

Richard

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Martin.

There are several possibilities to explain the difference between 60 GB and
44.7 GB, and you probably already know about some of them, but just in case:

1. Marketers say 1 GB = 1 Billion Bytes. Programmers say 1 GB = (1 KB * 1
KB * 1 KB) - and 1 KB = 1024 (that's 2 ^ 10) bytes, so 1 GB = 1,073,741,824
bytes, and 60 billion bytes = about 55.879 GB. That could explain over 4 GB
of your difference.

2. I never had a Compaq, but many computer makers install a hidden
partition on the HD to hold some critical or proprietary files. If your
computer has such a partition, that might account for several GB.

3. Your BIOS might be all or part of the problem, but I don't really think
so. In early 2000, 20 GB was a big drive, but by the end of 2000, 60 GB HDs
were not uncommon. To be sure your BIOS is adequate, visit the HP website
and look for support for your Presario, since HP bought Compaq. I've not
searched www.hp.com; I'll leave that to you. Be sure to search for your
exact model and for WinXP Support - and look specifically for BIOS updates.

4. You said you "only have 191 mgb of ram." I suspect you mean 192 MB,
since RAM comes in powers of 2 and usually in multiples of 64 MB these days.
That missing 1 MB may simply be a typo, which is not significant. Or it may
indicate that your Presario is using 1 MB for some purpose of its own, which
may or may not mean anything, but is not likely to have anything to do with
your HD capacity.

Are you just looking for an explanation for the apparently missing HD
capacity, Martin? Or do you really have a problem that we can help with?

RC