80GB drive only showing as 33GB

dmw16

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Nov 12, 2000
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Im having a little trouble with a hard drive my friend gave me to try to fix. It is supposed to be an 80GB Samsung drive, but it only shows as 32.something gigs. It was in his system when his motherboard went bad and Im wondering if something went wrong with it at that time. I was just wondering if anyone had any suggestions.
thanks,
-doug
 

Pariah

Elite Member
Apr 16, 2000
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Was it working properly in the system before the MB went bad, or was it new?
 

Alex

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Oct 26, 1999
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Originally posted by: Pariah
Was it working properly in the system before the MB went bad, or was it new?

that's a must-know...

i'd say backup, format and partition and it should be all good!
 

dmw16

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Nov 12, 2000
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I went ahead and fired up the WinXP installer just to see what it would see on the drive. It saw the whole drive. Dont know what the problem was, but all seems fine now.
thanks,
-doug
 

RanDum72

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Feb 11, 2001
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Probably his mobo ran into a BIOS limitation (older mobo's can address only up to a certain capacity).
 

corkyg

Elite Member | Peripherals
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Mar 4, 2000
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Well, to start with - I suspect you have an older computer that has an older BIOS and 32 MB (nominal) is as big a drive as it will allow. That's what happens when you put in a bigger drive - it reads at the limit it is allowed.
 

Legendary

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Jan 22, 2002
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I had this problem, it wasn't the BIOS. Check to see if there's anything in the jumper spots. Having two jumpers (or a jumper where it shouldn't be) will mess up the size shown. Make sure it's jumpered correctly and there's nothing in the jumper spots.
 

RanDum72

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Feb 11, 2001
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He already transferred the drive to another computer and the whole capacity showed up. It was obviously a BIOS limitation.