Lost GBs on Hard Drive

I have a 300 GB Hard Drive, after uninstalling Vista and installing XP I seem to have lost 160 Gs, I partitoned and formatted in NTFS. I have been told that XP cannot read above 160 gb. I would be obliged if someone could throw some light on this for me. Thanks Quarterbat.

 

Whoever told you this is a bit off... older versions of XP (SP1 and earlier) could only use 127gb, even if the drive was 250gb, or in your case 300gb. This was corrected with SP2. So if you're only seeing 160gb, it's not due to this limitation of older service packs. Something else is up. Right click My Computer > Manage. In the left pane, look under Storage for Disk Management and double-click it. This will provide a list of storage devices hooked up to the PC. It should show you what's going on with the C: drive and how much has been allocated and the total capacity. If you're unsure what it's telling you, post a screen shot of it, and we'll try to help.
...and welcome to Major Geeks! :major

EDIT- after reading your post a second time, I noticed that you said you partitioned the drive. Why? If the drive had Vista on it, all you'd have to do is boot to your XP disc and format the drive without doing ANY partition work. Something may have gone awry or you unintentionally did something with partition sizing during this process.

 

Thanks for the info DLB, done what you have suggested but the final result was the same, will send a screen shot over the next 24 hrs. Thanks sgain, Quareterbat.

 

hi,

i had this problem on w2k, it was supposed to be fixed in service pack 3, but it doesn't work all the time,
you need to enable biglba (logical block addressing) in the registry,

i used this little tool to check, its a stand alone so doesn't need installing, just double click to run and it will let you know whether you have passed or failed, if you fail then just click on 'set EnableBigLBA' button and it will auto-fix

http://www.48bitlba.com/enablebiglbatool.htm

 

Quarterbat, I'd think that Logical Block Addressing would be handled in your BIOS automatically, if needed, unless you have a really old motherboard. I've used 200 GB hard drives in Win XP home and never had to do anything special. My BIOS automatically takes care of LBA, if needed, and I upgraded to Service Pack 2 long ago. Did your Win XP install include SP2 or have you upgraded to SP2?

I think dlb may be correct -- perhaps something went amiss during partitioning. What info do you see if you open Start/Programs/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management and look at the drive letter (C: ?) for the problem drive?

Oops, sorry...I see dlb already suggested you do the same thing via the right click menu in My Computer. I really don't think you'll have to do any registry tinkering in XP to resolve this, though it may well be the case in Win2000.

 

Thanks for the info eezak, much appreciated .Quarterbat.

 

Thanks Hawklord, sounds good to me, I am about to have a go, wiil keep you posted. Quarterbat

 

Thanks again for your advice and trouble dl. Quartebat.

 

I am trying to get the screen shot to you, but i am having difficulty, I keep being asked for my URL but i have not got one (another problem ??) any suggestions please. Quarterbat

 

Are you using some 3rd party web software to post the screenshot on another website? You don't need to do that as you can upload your screenshot to this site and provide a link to it in your next post. Here is a link with instructions for taking a screenshot (and how to edit and save it also):

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=26019

And here are the instructions for uploading/attaching your screenshot to a post here:

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=86880

The instructions for uploading/attaching may, at first glance, appear rather complicated, but they're really not too bad as the first few steps are just about being sure you're in "Advanced" posting mode rather than "Quick Reply" mode. For the rest follow the instructions carefully and, assuming you've saved your screenshot per the instructions in the first link, and can locate that save on your hard drive, you should be all set.

 

That screen shot shows clearly that your hard drive has over 151 GB that are "unallocated" -- i.e. have not been assigned to any partition and so are not accessible by the operating system currently. The amount of space that was assigned to the C: partition is suspiciously close to the 127 GB limit of pre-ServicePack 2 versions of XP however. Which version of XP did you install to this hard drive? It may well be that hawklord was correct in his diagnosis after all. However, I don't know whether the tool he recommended, designed for use with Win2K, will work well, or at all, with a Win XP install.

Tell us first exactly which version (and which Service Pack, if any) are included on your install disk and then we can tell you how to proceed.

 

Hi guys great site. I am also having the same issue and I think its related to my XP installation disk. Although i am using service pack 3 now on a fresh install on a new computer, my XP disk is quite old. It contains no service pack additions and thus sees 128 gigs of a 500 gig drive. At this point it is also the boot drive if this is relevent. Any suggestions for getting around this hurdle would be greatly apprciated.

Thanks!