Why is windows not recognizing my hard drive as 40gig? Says its only 5.5 gig

[Se7en01]

I have an IBM 40 gig hard drive and in "BIOS" and in MSDOS it shows as 40gig; However, in windows, under "Properties" in "My Computer" and "Windows Explorer" it only shows that it is 5.8 gigs. This disk is NOT partitioned. WHat is wrong? I can't add any programs becasue windows is saying my hard drive is full even though I only have 4.5 gigs used. HELP!

 

[Barefoot]

Open up a DOS prompt window and type fdisk. Choose Yes to enable support for large disks, and then choose option #4: Display partition information. If Windows is only reading your drive as a 5.8GB drive, then fdisk should also read it as a 5.8GB (5900 some-odd MB) partition. If it does, and it says that it is only using 15% or whatever, then you've got a partition problem that, honestly, probably needs to be corrected by backing up your data, repartitioning, reformatting, and reinstalling. You might avoid that if you have Partition Magic, but that software costs money if you don't already have it.

I'm betting that that is what your problem is. It could be a matter of low-level formatting, but if your BIOS shows it as a 40GB drive, then you ought to be safe.

 

[Se7en01]

BTW, thanks for the reply. Well, DOS and FDISK IS reporting that it is a 45 gig drive. I amde one partition and it is at 100% usage. The BIOS shows it a 45 and Fdisk shows it as 45, however, windows explorer and "my computer" are showing it as a 6 gig and I only have 23mb free. Why would BIOS and DOS report it correctly, but windows not? And I know that windows really thinks it is a 6 gig, because it has about 5.8 gigs being used and wont let me install anymore programs, it keeps telling me the disk is full.

 

[Barefoot]

Hmm...there's something else you could try. It's possible that Windows simply refuses to update its driver database to show that your hard drive is 45GB. Did you formerly have a 6GB in this system and copy Windows over to this new hard drive? Also, have you tried running Scandisk yet? Scandisk will most likely report back that there is a problem with the FAT32 table that is causing Windows to incorrectly report drive free space. It should then repair it, and hopefully will correct your problem.

If that doesn't work, try this: in your System Control Panel, click on Device Manager, and click on the plus next to Disk Drives. Click on the hard drive (should be Generic IDE Disk Type 47 or the like) and then click on Remove. Reboot. Windows should then show a "Windows is building its driver information database" message, and then you'll have yourself a 45GB drive instead of a 6GB drive.