installing windows on new computer: disk 0 has only 3.9gb of free space (new HDD)

[kingsownall]

So my friend brought a new computer and hes trying to install windows. When he gets to the part where it asks you to choose the hard drive to install it on.

The hard drive has only 3.9 gb of free space and 3.9gb used. His bios reads 4141mb of free space(something along those lines). Basically he can't install windows on his hard drive because he has no space even though the hard drive is new and has nothing in it. His com specs are

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB 3.5IN 16MB
Mushkin Enhanced Silverline Stiletto 8GB
Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3 ATX LGA1155
Samsung SH-222AL 22X DVD Writer SATA Lightscribe OEm
Asus Direct CU 560
Corsair tx750 PSU

He was wondering whether or not his hdd is defective

 

[postaled]

Can he put the hard drive on a different sata controller?

 

[denis280]

The way i see this. Bad motherboard or hard drive. just bring it back if it's new.

 

[paul878]

Can you try to delete that 3.9g partition and make another one?

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Something's up with the partition(s) He's not accessing the full 500 GB.

 

[Matt1970]

Something's up with the partition(s) He's not accessing the full 500 GB.

This. His master boot record is corrupted.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392

The /FixMbr usually does the trick. Once you do that reboot and you should see all the drive.

 

[Uncle Bob]

Recently I setup a new computer on a similar Gigabyte board; in the manual there is a bios setting described thus;

[EFI CD/DVD Boot Option]
Set this item to EFI if you want to install the operating system to a hard drive larger than 2.2 TB. Make sure the operating system to be installed supports booting from a GPT partition, such as Windows 7 64-bit and Windows Server 2003 64-bit. Auto lets the BIOS automatically configure this setting depending on the hard drive you install. (Default: Auto)

So the two key points are
1. enable support in BIOS (perhaps the 'auto' setting is not working? try the other options)
2. make sure you are using GPT format (not NTFS)

HTH