new harddrive

Hi,
I have a new harddrive. hitachi 250 gig.
Have tried formatting and loading O.S.
but it is only reconigsed as 32 gig.
tried several times. is loading as fat 32 and not N.T.F.S.
O.S. is XP.
can someone please tell me what is wrong.
i.e. when I delete partition. it is still reconigsed.
sorry if this is a bit vague.
this is my first posting for something like this.

 

I think you are missing a step and its using Fat 32 vice NTFS. No big deal, after its installed convert to NFTS via Disk Management (it will prompt you to reboot). Then do your updates including SP2 and you should be able to utilize the full drive capacity.

 

thank you.
I dont think it will because the partition is only 32gig
and can't change that.
will your way open it upto 250gig? do you think.

 

It might or at least get you back to NTFT and allow the remaining space to be usable as a seperate partition (which would be better than one very large one). I'd give it a try since you stated you have aready formatted and reloaded several times.

 

Look on the back of the drive where the Master and slave jumpers are. Do you see 1 for cap (capacity)?
This limits to 32gb. Not on all drives though.
Could also be a bios limitation.
If you can format to say 20gb (or 32gb) and then partion the rest, that is truly the way to go. Data will be on the other partitions and OS separate.

 

Check the bios or bios post message and see what it say... jumper the drive as master without any other drives connected to your mainboard.
If the drive is still only 32GB then its for sure you need to update your bios.
If the bios is oke then it could be Windows XP, you can partition your new drive first with a bootable partitioner (like Acronis) before installing Windows...

 

Thank you all for your answers.
I have checked the bios and do not see anything wrong.
it is now seen as NTFS but still only 32 GIG.
Jerkyking, have gone to disk manager. It does not allow any options I'm afraid.
I have got a gigabyte board(new) model no. GA-8IPE1000-g
so I do not know what is wrong. Have built comp's before and never had problems like this before.
still need idea's please.