lost Gigs???

I jsut put in a new 30g hd in a friends computer. I had formated it in another computer and it read something close to 30g on it. But when i put it in his computer it reads only 7.8G??? I know i did it in NTFS or whatever and his is FAT32 file system.Would that have anythng to do with it?Not sure how much info you need. But it's a WD 30G hd .The MB I think is a CUSL2 ? from ASUS. The OS is XP (but all of a sudden it "NOT VALAD: anymore) If you need anymore info I'll try to get it.But I need to get his computer up and running soon! Oh is there anyway to covert a FAT32 to NTFS? WITHOUT reinstalling windows?

 

If you hook up a HD that is NTFS as a 2nd drive to a FAT32 drive, it won't be recognized correctly, and any data on it will not be accessible from the FAT32 system. If it was reversed (if the 2nd drive was FAT32 and the main C: drive is NTFS), then you'd be OK. FAT systems can't read NTFS. Converting a drive from FAT32 to NTFS is easy, but you need to boot into NTFS to do it (meaning you must do it from within WinXP). Here's the links to the info:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307881/en-us
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314097/EN-US/
You might be able to do this from the recovery console if you can't boot into WinXP and you have a WinXP installation CD.... good luck!

hopperdave2000

If you're dealing with Windows 2000, try this link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/214579/EN-US/

 

yeah the C: drive is FAT 32 . I din't think it would cut it down that much??!! From 30Gigs to 7.8? That some loss!! Will it still be that low if I format it to FAT32? I already did that but it didn't give me any more room,Still 7.8G. But if I follow those directions to convert , it "should" recognize that both drives are 30G +/- ? I hope there isn't any space restrictions! His 30Gig HD is about 98% FULL!! Can't even defragment!!