160 GB Western Digital HD... need help! 1

[ThrowingShapes]

I have a 160GB Western Digital HD that I recently converted to NTFS. It is only giving me sbout 127GB, this is completely formated. I think it's using 512 allocation unit size, which I heard somewhere was not the best.

I want to maximize my space so I can get atleast up to 155 as I realize you won't get completely 160 as some is used up for other things in the format. I am just annoyed at the loss of space, for a 160GB HD I paid for I'm only getting 127 out of it!

How can I maximize this? I've been in Control Panel -> Administrative Services -> Computer Management and tried changing the allocation to 2048 or something else but I still only get 127 GB.

Can anyone help???

 

[lgebhart]

Your bios is only capable of 137GB. You need a bios update.

Hopefully your bios is new enough because some bios's will never be capable of anything other than 137GB.

Recommend you go to the site of your motherboard manufacturer for your bios update, or if its a Dell, Compaq, HP, etc. go to their site for a bios update for the model of computer you have.

Good Luck


lgebhart

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MAI for MS Office 2000
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[ThrowingShapes]

Thank you lgebhart!

I will give that a try and report back.

 

[cdogg]

Don't go messing with the allocation settings of the hard drive. Use the auto setting unless you know what you're doing.

The 160GB drive you just bought is really only 149GB in terms of storage capacity. The 160 figure sold on the box is a bit misleading, because it only represents 160,000,000,000 bytes. However, one gigabyte is really 1,073,741,824 bytes - that's about 70MB for every GB that the manufacturer is leaving out.

See this thread for more of an explanation:
thread751-947405


As for the 137GB limitation, that's due to a component in your system that's using 24-bit LBA (Logical Block Addressing). In addition to what lgebhart has told you, the other possibility besides the BIOS is the OS. One of the two or both are causing your problem. If you're running Windows XP, you need to be on SP1 or later. If you already are, flash your BIOS to the latest revision.

This site explains the limitation of 24-bit vs. 48-bit LBA:

http://www.48bitlba.com

~cdogg
[tab]"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind";
[tab][tab]- Aristotle
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[ThrowingShapes]

I noticed another small issue, ever since I changed over to NTSF on the G: drive it is now showing up in Blue type in "My Computer", some files are showing blue text as well. I am wondering why this is...

 

[bjdobs]

XP compressed files show up in blue ... you may have turned on one of the compress options ... there are two options for this ... one is for all files ... the other is for old files (files that haven't been accessed for a given length of time)

 

[ThrowingShapes]

Do you have your drive compressed? Would you recommend I keep this setting? Does it matter much?

 

[bjdobs]

Compression is an overhead ... you sacrifice a bit of speed for additional space on your drives ... if you are not worried about space then you probably don't need compression.

 

[cdogg]

Yep, compressed files are accessed at a slower rate. A 160GB drive does not need it. Also, did you set the drive allocation back to the default settings in Computer Management?

You might want to create a separate thread for each problem/question that you have...


~cdogg
[tab]"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind";
[tab][tab]- Aristotle
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[ThrowingShapes]

Using Partition Magic 8, I got the following info on both drives. Please let me know if I need to change anything. I want both drives to be default but it appears one has a different setting.

C: (40 GB HD)

NTSF VER 3.1
Bytes per NTFS Sector: 512
Cluster Size: 4 K Bytes (8 sectors per cluster)
First MFT Cluster: 786,461
First Record Size: 1 K bytes

G: (160 GB HD)

NTSF VER 3.1
Bytes per NTFS Sector: 512
Cluster Size: 2 K Bytes (4 sectors per cluster)
First MFT Cluster: 1,572,864
First Record Size: 1 K bytes

So as you can see the new 160 GB drive has a 2 K bytes cluster size where as the old drive has 4. Is 2 default?

I am formatting the drive with "default" set now, I will see if this changes after completion.

 

[garebo]

YOu dont have to be concerned about the cluster size, but i see that partition magic sees the drive as 160 gigs.
Maybe all will be well, but if not then you need the bios update as stated, very common situation with older motherboards and older bios and newer hard drives.
Its pretty easy to do.
And as stated already, dont mess with allocation either.


Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[ThrowingShapes]

Yeah, I will definately not mess with allocation again. I have an ASUS P4B with i845 chipset, so it's a fairly older motherboard.

If anyone is curious here is a page with it, funny I couldn't find the P4B page at Asus.com!

http://www.dansdata.com/i845s.htm

 

[ThrowingShapes]

I updated the bios, still having the same problem. Maybe my bios settings aren't all correct. I don't know what each should be half the time anyways.

For instance there is something that asks if you're using OS/2 and if your on board memory is over 64m then you should enable the setting. The thing is, I am so dumb I don't even know what "OS/2" is, and I don't know what my on board memory is.

I know I have 128 GB of RAM, is that the same thing???

Arghh.. i'm so dumb.

 

[Freestone]

OS/2 is IBM's Operating System / 2 which came out after Microsoft and IBM split up their cooperative development. You should leave the OS/2 setting disabled.

Your Asus P4B support page is here:

http://www.asus.com/products/mb/socket478/p4b/overview.htm

What operating system and what service pack level are you using?