HDD Incorrect capicity shown 1

[JDfarmBOY2006]

I just recently bought a new Westen Digital HDD its a 20 gig model and i noticed tonight that i have only a 8 gig capicity when i go to the propertys it says capicity 19.72 gigs and then on the bottom where it shows my hard drive it says 8 gigs i dont get it. Is it a driver update need or whats the deal. I did not recieve a disk with this hard drive so i have the driver that comes with windows xp professional. Thanks let me know.
Brandon

 

[micker377]

Need info on the computer. How did you partition and format it? What size hard drive did it replace? How old is the motherboard (BIOS limits?). Post all info you can find.

 

[JDfarmBOY2006]

This hard drive replaced a 6 gig ard drive. The mother board aint that old it is a 500mhz. My computer is a Dell optiplex GX1. I aint sure about the BIOS limit. I tried this hard drive on my acer comp too and loaded windows 98se on it and it still said around 8 gigs so could it be a bad hdd or is it something im doing. I partitioned it in dos with fdisk and then formated it and loaded the OS on it. Thanks let me know what i can do

 

[wolluf]

If the mobo is runing 500mhz cpu, then it will support 20GB drive.

If you're installing XP, you don't need to use dos and fdisk first - XP's got its own, generally superior partitioning tools. And you didn't say what values you supplied to fdisk.

I did'n't understand this comment 'i noticed tonight that i have only a 8 gig capicity when i go to the propertys it says capicity 19.72 gigs and then on the bottom where it shows my hard drive it says 8 gigs'

because you never said where it was dispalying those figures (on the POST screen, in windows, and if in windows, where).

If you run disk management (run diskmgmt.msc) in XP, it should display details about your drive. It may show one partition of 8GB and free space of c. 11GB.

If you've just set this up, I'd suggest starting again - using XP install partitioning tools this time (delete any existing partition and create new one). If it let you create a partition of c. 19GB, post back.

 

[JDfarmBOY2006]

I saw the figures in widows in my computer. I right clicked on my hard drive went down to propertys. Then to harware and clicked on my primary hdd. Then it brought up a screen that said general and there is a tab on top that has voulme well i clicked on this and it says.
Disk 0
Type Basic
Status Online
Partition Master boot record
Then capacity 19085 MB
UNallocated 11060 MB (could this Be the problem)
Reserved space 0 MB

Then on the way bottom it shows my hdd and says the name of my hard drive and the capicity witch is 8009mn
Thanks in advance

 

[JDfarmBOY2006]

Hello all thank you vary much for your support i fixed the problem by makeing a extended partition. Thanks again
Brandon