60GB HD shows as 17.9GB in 'My Computer'

[aich69]

PLEASE SOMEONE HELP!!! This one is frustrating beyond belief!!

I have a Toshiba laptop with a 60GB hard disk. In 'My Computer' the disk shows as being 17.9GB with 9.45GB free space. However, looking at the disk in MMC-Disk Management, it shows as being 55.88 (as expected for a quoted 60GB disk) but still with only 9.45GB free.
The disk only has one partition- C: NTFS with Win XP.

I have looked at the disk with Acronis Partition Manager and this shows it as being 55.87GB total, 9.45GB free too.

Can anyone possibly shed any light on why this might be happening...and better still how to rectify it?

I don't have a lot of hair...please help me save what's left.

Thanks

 

[bfam]

When did this problem occur?

Have you tried to delete the partition and setting it up again in fdisk?




- argueing on the internet is like running in the special olympics, even though you win, you're still a retard.

 

[alidabiri]

what does the BIOS show it as? 17 or 55?
how old is your BIOS?
some BIOS will not support disks larger than 32gb.
you may have to "dismount" it, fdisk, format, and install it.
to fdisk it, do this:
get a win-98 boot disk from:

http://www.bootdisk.com

start your pc with the boot floppy disk in pc.
when it comes up, enter fdisk
display partition(s) if any
create partition using "large size" option, and all available space

turn pc off
turn pc back on, format the disk.
check the size.
take floppy out.
turn pc off.
put win-xp cd in cd-rom drive.
turn pc on, while tapping del, esc, f1, or whatever that will get you to BIOS screen.
choose boot sequence, and select boot from cd first.
save BIOS and exit.
let windows install

 

[rodrunner79]

alidabiri, good advise...

All disk larger than 32GB should be formatted as NTFS, is your partition formatted using this file structure? Also, have you ever use a third party application like Restore-It that alters your partitions?

 

[jurgen36]

rodrunner79:
Why should large disks be formated as NTFS? All the machines I controll use Fat32, this is mainly for speed and easy recovery reasons. Xp sp1/2 will gladly read any size HD, but it can only format large disk ove 32Gbytes in NTFS, this seems to be a fault of xp. I format my drives with Win98se, no problems at all. My largest drives are over 1 terrabyte. Most of the drives are 160 to 400 Gbytes.
Regards

Jurgen

 

[aich69]

Thanks for the suggestions/advice guys. Much appreciated.


The disk was showing as 55GB in the bios....and the bios is up to date, however it still showed as 17.8 in 'My Computer'.
We did try Acronis Partition Manager but although this showed the disk as 55GB the free space still read as 9.54GB.
We have a feeling that the problem was caused by the user trying to restore the disk using Paragon Disk Image. There were originally 2 partitions. When they restored the disk from the image it restored the C: partition but not the E:
This E: partition accounted for the supposedly 'missing' portion of the disk.

Anyway, to cut a long story short.... a rebuild ensued, with a formatting of the disk prior to this. All is now well with the disk showing and offering it's full 55.88GB capacity.

Thanks again guys.

Henry