Hard drive not reading full capacity

Hello,

I recently built a new computer with the specs listed below. Everything seems to work fine in the computer. However, when I enter system information, I notice that my hard drive is only showing 137gb when it should be showing 320gb. I read somewhere about the BIOS needing to be 48 bit LBA compatable, but I don't know how to go about finding that out and Abit doesn't seem to be much help either. Also, I read about a PCI controller card. Can anyone enlighten me as what I need to do to have my computer read the entire 320gb since it's kind of a waste to only have 137gb? Also, please keep in mind that this is the first time I have built a computer, and in all honesty, don't really know a whole lot about them, so please be very thorough (and kind....I'm a newbie!) in responding! Thanks so much!

P.S. I read the other threads on this, but didn't find much help for my situation. Also, if you need more info, please let me know! Thanks again!

Here are my specs:

Abit KN9 SLI motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ processor
2 x 1gb G-Skill DDR2 800 PC2-6400 memory
Seagate 320gb SATA-2 7200 16mb Hard Drive
Sparkle GeForce 7300 GT 512MB DDR2 Video Card
Ultra 500 watt PSU
Windows XP Professional (Windows Vista Ultimate on order!)

 

the reason you are only seeing 137 gig is due to not having sp2 on install. you should be able to use partition magic or some succh to expand the drive though

 

How do I go about doing that with Partition Magic? I understood that if the BIOS wasn't 48 bit LBA compatable, that I needed some kind of controller card to make it read the full drive. If I can do it with a simple program, that would be great! Please let me know how that works, if possible! Thanks!

 

you are running a dual core with ddr2 so yes bios will see bigger then 137 gig. partition magic when you run it will show you all drive space that is partitioned and not partitioned. you can at that point tell it to partition remaining space into another drive OR if you click on c it gives you the option to expand the drive. make sure you have updated windows to sp2 first

 

Thanks Bonkers! Worked like a charm!

 

glad i could help