Acer Aspire Hard disk upgrade

I have replaced the original 40Gb disk on an Acer Aspire 3003LC with a WD 320GB. Win XP Home SP3 from an OEM disk is the OS. Problem is I can only see 127GB of the 320. I have seen some references to needing at least SP2 to be able to access above 132GB, but as I have SP3 this would not seem to be the issue. Would appreciate some help. thanks

 

That is caused by your drive being in FAT32. You need to change your hard drive to NTFS file system to use all 320gb of your hard drive.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307881

You may have to reparation/reformat your hard drive if that doesn't' work.

 

My apologies I didn't mention that the drive is freshly formatted as an NTFS volume, so the issue would seem to be elsewhere..? thx

 

Hum when installing windows did you use the entire drive?

 

Yes I did, but the 130-odd Gb was all that the install program offered. Is this possibly BIOS related?

 

I doubt it's bio related. Just to check is the HD 320gb on it. Does it say 320 GB on the drive?

If on windows xp install all it said was 130gb then there could be an issue with the drive.

 

I suspect it is indeed the BIOS, specifically a lack of 48 bit LBA support, especially if you have access to only 137GB of drive space.
Acer Australia service and support

 

The drive is a WD3200BEVE and is marked as 320GB. Bought from a reputable outfit recently so don't yet have a reason to disbelieve what is says on the label. No indications of any errors from the disk which might point to a hardware problem with it..

 

In response to Just Playin's comment I guess I will try local Acer on Monday and see if there is a BIOS update that might address the problem. Might be wishful thinking, but worth a crack.

 

yup turns out that the Aspire 3000 series can't do 48bit LBA due to motherbd/chipset restrictions. Oh well, live and learn. thanks for your help.