fixing a hard drive formatted as fat32

[mightyesoj11]

I formatted a maxtor IDE hard drive with Fat 32. It is an 84 GB hard drive but only lists at 31 GB, I tried reformatting with NTFS but it is still 31 GB. Is there anyway to fix this problem so I can get the full 80 GB usage???
thanks

 

[PascalT]

you probably need to upgrade to sp1/2.. if you're on XP that is. go to your control panel, admin section, storage-> disk management. maybe the rest of your drive is there.

if you're just installing windows on it, setup that 31gb, then install windows on it, you can get the rest once in windows.

 

[montag451]

Also, some drives have a 32Gig jumper. Check that that isn't on it.

 

[Larcher]

did you check disk management to see if you have any unused space, Right click on My Computer and click manage, it will then open computer management and then from there click on Disk Management and see if it shows any unused space assuming you haven't tried this yet.

 

[jackschmittusa]

What did you do to partition the drive? What mb are you using?

 

[mightyesoj11]

Ok, I found it under computer management. It says the other portion of the disk space is unallocated. What do I do next so I can use the space?
thanks for the help

 

[mightyesoj11]

also....there is no jumper, I have an ASUS P5AD2 deluxe, I first formatted in dos with WIN 98 using fat 32

 

[montag451]

There are some limits with some mobos.
2gig
8gig
32gig
137gig
I think the next limit is about 2000000gig.
If there ia a prob and you are stuck at 32gig, you could try a BIOS update,
or try some partitioning software, like ACRONIS Disk Director, or Partition Manager [Powerquest or Ranish], or Maxtor might have a utility to do this for free.
Problem is that if anything is written past the 32gig limit [in your case], then you could well lose data, or your installation, if it isn't recognised properly.

 

[ironique]

Go back to computer management, right click on the "unallocated space" and format it, this will create a second partition. Unformatted or "unallocated" space will not appear in windows explorer. Alternatively, to have one big partition rather than two, right click on the "formatted" section and delete the partition. The whole hard drive will be unallocated. Then right click and format to create a partition of the size you want. FAT32 does have a limit on the partition size, i cant remember what size that is. If it wont accept a single 80GB partition, format it as NTFS.