hitachi 320Gb hd onlr seen as 130Gb 1

[ejmuk]

Hi
I've seen this raised before, but I would stil like some help, please.
I bought a new Hitachi deskstar 320Gb to put ito my backup machine, platinix 2e motherboard.
I installed Xp pro and noted the hd was only 127Gb. I went to microsoft and installed all the Xp updates including SP2.
The drive only shows 127Gb.
Do I need to update the bios/purchase partion magic or do something else?
thanks for any advice

 

[wolluf]

If you search on this forum you'll see this covered many times.

2 factors:-

1. Does the bios support drives over 128GB (look on POST screen to see what its detected as).
If it doesn't, there may be a bios upgrade available to give this functionality - look on mobo manufacturer's website. If not, you'll need either a PCI controller card or new mobo to use full capacity.

2. If bios etc ok, XP needs to be at SP1 or later. If you installed XP with no service pack, it will only have seen 128GB - and if you used all space that's the size of the partition. When you installed SP2, it may have made whole drive available - but see this (you may need a registry edit):_

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;303013

but the rest will be unpartitioned - so you'll need to go into disk management and create partition (run diskmgmt.msc)

If you want single partition you'll need something like partition magic, or create a slipstreamed install disk incorporating SP2 and do a new clean install. There's lots of slipstream info available on the web, eg

http://www.nliteos.com

has an app that will do it for you.

 

[ejmuk]

Thanks for the reply. I now have use of about 300Gb - sorted.
I checked the bios and it was seeing 320Gb, so no problem there.
The link to the registry (see earlier posting) is not necessary if you install SP2. You can check for 48bitLBA here

http://www.48bitlba.com/enablebiglbatool.htm.

Mine was fine.
The answer (thanks wolluf) was to create a partition by going to start - run and running diskmgmt.msc