XP Hard drive detection anomoly

[Gillesibub]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

I have a fully-updated xp pro install, running nice and sturdy on my machine,
with 2 maxtor 160 gig SATA drives as my main and backup, and 2 160 gig IDE's
for bulk storage and the majority of my installed files (in order to give xp
PLENTY of room to romp around on the main drive), the thing is, in the past 2
builds (COMPLETELY DIFFERENT KIT except the IDE drives), the same pair of IDE
drives have been recognised by the mobo as 160's but xp will ONLY see them as
120 gig drives, losing me a full 80 gigs of storage all told. The SATA drives
it sees fine. Anyone got any idea why? Please?

 

[anna]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

"Gillesibub" <Gillesibub@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:840DF056-7A02-4326-8F29-E4B758E9BD1F@microsoft.com...
>I have a fully-updated xp pro install, running nice and sturdy on my
>machine,
> with 2 maxtor 160 gig SATA drives as my main and backup, and 2 160 gig
> IDE's
> for bulk storage and the majority of my installed files (in order to give
> xp
> PLENTY of room to romp around on the main drive), the thing is, in the
> past 2
> builds (COMPLETELY DIFFERENT KIT except the IDE drives), the same pair of
> IDE
> drives have been recognised by the mobo as 160's but xp will ONLY see them
> as
> 120 gig drives, losing me a full 80 gigs of storage all told. The SATA
> drives
> it sees fine. Anyone got any idea why? Please?


Is it possible you installed your PATA & SATA drives at different times? In
other words did you first install your PATA drives when XP had been
installed but had *not* yet been upgraded via SP1 and/or SP2? That might
account for the system not recognizing the full capacity of those PATA
drives. (Although it is puzzling that you state only 120 GB has been
recognized. If it's the large-capacity barrier that's the problem here, 127
GB (approx.) should have been recognized.)

Anyway, if it is the large-capacity barrier that's involved, it was only
after you installed SP1 and/or SP2 that you installed the SATA drives so
that their full-capacity was recognized by the system

Access Disk Management and see if the two PATA drives show "unallocated"
disk space of roughly 22 GB. If it does, you can partition/format that
unallocated disk space.
Anna