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Installing new hard drive 1

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barwarner

Technical User
Jun 22, 2004
62
US
I have an older Pentium that was running XP on it and its' 20 GB hard drive crashed. I installed a new 30 GB drive on the PC and after seeing that the BIOS accepted it as a 30 GB drive, I proceeeded to install my XP Pro. The problem is that XP only sees it as a 2 GB drive. During the initial stages of setup, during partition creation, it only sees 2 GB total as available. Why would the BIOS see it as 30 GB, but XP see it as only 2 GB? Any ideas?

Barry
 
There are only 2 things I can think of quickly. One is that some older hard drives have a jumper on them that, if set, limits them to 2Gb.

The other is that, if formatted with FAT16 (instead of FAT32 or NTFS), there is a 2Gb limit.

What make/model of HD is it?
 
I forgot to add...

Check the jumper settings of the old 20Gb drive and make sure the jumper settings on the new 30Gb drive are the same, i.e. whether it's set to 'Master' or 'Cable Select'.

Hope this helps...
 
Rick:

Thanks for the reply. The drive is an IBM Dreamstar, but I don't know the actual model number (until I get home). I'll check your suggestions out when I get home this evening.

Barry
 
Rick:

Setting the drive to cable select (like the old drive) worked. Thanks.

Barry
 
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