New Hardrive purchase, 160 gb, getting 128 gb after formating

[garkon]

Problem solved.

I just bought a seagate 160gb sata hard drive off zip zoom fly, and i get 127 gb storage after formating it. I know ur supposed to lose some, but seems like ALOT. Capacity under propertys shows up as 137,435,803,648 bytes. Anybody know if this normal for the 160 size or something?

 

[JBT]

Yeah that is alot more than you should be losing. No idea what is wrong with it though, sorry.

 

[garkon]

Should i try a re-format, it dosent have os on it, so it'll be easy. Worthy of a return or something, cuz i'm loosing like 15 more gigs than i think i should be? Plz respond if u know a little.

 

[birdpup]

160 x 10^9 = 160,000,000,000 bytes base 10
160,000,000,000 / (1024^3) = 149GB base 2

Your target amount is 149GB. The 127GB you see is limited by the bios. There should be a bios setting for the hard drive with a drive size setting. I have not looked at this in a while so I forget the exact options. You should see something like "large disk support", LBA, and a couple more options I do not remember right now. Ensure this is set this to AUTO. Reboot and try again.

If that does not work, you can attempt flashing the latest version of your bios.

The bios is exactly the problem but I am not exactly remembering the solution at the moment since I usually solve this situation by partitioning the drive with FreeBSD's sysinstall. However, I do not expect you to do this and there is a perfectly logical MS Windows based solution to the problem that may merely be based on a bios option.

*Edit* based on most recent message
There is no reason to return the drive. Yes, the drive will need to be repartitioned and then reformatted.

 

[Alaska]

you need to update XP to SP1 at the very least XP can only recognize 137 GB without the SP1.

This is a Windows limitation.

 

[garkon]

Running under 2000, latest service pack, as far as i know. for informational purposes.

 

[vailr]

You probably booted from an early version of WinXP install disk, which is limited to a < 128 GB HD size.
There's some extra update files available from MS, if you want to try creating an updated & slipstreamed WinXP-SP2 installer CD.
The extra update files are NOT included the regular SP2 slipstreaming process. It consists of an updated "DEPLOY.CAB" file in the (CD):\SUPPORT\TOOLS folder.
***************
Edit: a similar update for Win2000 may (?) also be available.

 

[Hyun]

Here you go:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;305098

 

[garkon]

I'm sorry, i'm still not understanding what to do, do i have to download a file, i'm pretty sure got past sp2, i dont need any critical windows updates. How do i edit the file the article talks about to enable LBA. Second, how do i know if my bios is 48 bit LBA compatible.

 

[shoRunner]

if your motherboard is even some what recent it is 48 bit LBA compatible, you just need to edit the registry key. or use this tool

 

[garkon]

thanks for the tool download!!!! i got to get up for work at 4am, so i'll report back tommarow, thanks for all the help.

 

[garkon]

thanks everybody, i how have 21gb unallocated space in addition to my 127, format time! Problem solved, thanks again.