Size "says" one thing but actually is another

[armyperson59]

Alright,
I recently added a second hard drive to my dell Dimension 8100 and, the hard drive reads on the outside "160 gbytes". So i boot up my computer and i check and the total capacity is 31.4 gb. How is this so. I know you lose 7.2% but this is not. This is 130 gb lost. what is wrong and how can i get my 130gb of space back?

 

[Guest]

it might be partitioned? I think we'll need more information to get an idea of what exactly is wrong.

 

[armyperson59]

what more do you need to know?

It is a slave hard drive, it does not have an OS on it.

it is barracuda i believe.

 

[MrCommunistGen]

Unless there are 2 physical HDs in that computer then it's just partitioned.

 

[armyperson59]

there are..this is the second HD..

and if it is partitioned, what does that mean and how do i get 160gb?

 

[bc4]

partitioned means that instead of just being drive "d" it shows up as drive "d and e" Sometimes the "e" partition does not get assigned a drive letter and you have to do it manually.

What os are you using? You have to go to disk management and either repartition the whole drive or assign a drive letter to what I previously described as the "e" partition

 

[doormatderek]

You can chop up a single hardrive into smaller ones. That is partitioning. Each partition has its own drive letter. (C: D: ) If you add up all the partitions of the ONE drive, you should get the total capacity of the hardrive. Each partition is treated like an individual hardrive and needs to be formatted accordingly. I only do this if someone has 1 hardrive. That way you 'technically' can have 2 hardrives outta 1, and backup your important files on one, and can format C: to reinstall windows while keeping your important files backed up on your 'D:' drive; which is just a 'partition' of the actual whole drive.
Another problem could be your Operating System. Xp without at least Sp1 wont support drives over WHAT capacity? someone help me here...

 

[armyperson59]

this is it

 

[jrnyfan]

XP without SP1 or 2 will only support up to 137GB

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;303013

I would dare to say that the drive is formatted in FAT32 and not NTFS because FAT32 in WinXp limits you to 32GB.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314463

Hope that helps 😀

 

[doormatderek]

jrnyfan
Has it

 

[armyperson59]

what do i do?

 

[jrnyfan]

you need to try reformatting it with NTFS, not FAT32 and make sure you are running SP1 at least.

If that doesn't fix it, you need to go into Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management and make sure the disk is not partitioned. If it is not partitioned then you best get to RMA'ing it, you got a defective HDD, IMO