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80gb HDD reading as 32gb
Posted: Wed Jul 26, 2006 8:01 pm
by horton
i rebuilt a system today.
the hard drive that i was using just fine before, is now telling me its 32gb.
previously it was partitioned into 10gb and 70gb
half of me wants to bin it.
half of me wants to accept that ive lost 48gb somewhere..fuck knows
it formats ok. i installed xp on it ok.
Posted: Wed Jul 26, 2006 10:00 pm
by Tormentius
Are you using the latest BIOS for the motherboard?
Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 3:23 am
by Kills On Site
Perhaps a zero fill would help, it is what I would do.
Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 3:24 am
by Scourge
Kills On Site wrote:Perhaps a zero fill would help, it is what I would do.
I knew you were going to suggest that.
Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 4:08 am
by zolborg
Sounds like when you went to reinstall Windows you only formatted one of the partitions. But, of course, the size isn't right.
Go into disk management and see if you have any other partitions or any unallocated space.
Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 5:57 pm
by AmIdYfReAk
go to the manufactures website and download a formatting utility that they have, it will be able to format it back to its full size, and when windows looks at it it will be able to use the full size..
i had this issue with i put a 40GB hdd into a older computer, 32gig's formatted
Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 5:57 pm
by Tormentius
Kills On Site wrote:Perhaps a zero fill would help, it is what I would do.
*bangs head on desk* What would that possibly do to change the way his BIOS recognizes the drive's capacity? By what he is describing the XP install process doesn't see the drive as more than 32GB which usually means that the BIOS doesn't understand the larger drive. Upgrading it to the latest version will usually resolve the issue.
Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 6:00 pm
by AmIdYfReAk
ahahah tor, atleast he is trying
Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 10:21 pm
by Kills On Site
Well there is no way you are 100% certain the problem is in the BIOS Tormentius, and at any rate most manufactuer's utilities also have a SMART status checker and other diagnostics that horton could use beforehand.
Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 10:23 pm
by Tormentius
Kills On Site wrote:Well there is no way you are 100% certain the problem is in the BIOS Tormentius, and at any rate most manufactuer's utilities also have a SMART status checker and other diagnostics that horton could use beforehand.
The solution to every disk problem is not a low level format :icon27:. In fact, it rarely is.
Edit: And you're right I'm not 100% certain but when you're troubleshooting anything you start with the most likely/common causes for an error and work towards more complicated solutions from there.
Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 10:44 pm
by Kills On Site
Well considering that the hard drive was just formatted and XP was just installed I would think he wouldn't have any issues trying something like a zero fill. Also a zero fill is an extremely simple solution, its a set it and forget it overnight. If the motherboard is the same and the drive was not moved I would think that the motherboard would not have fucked its record of the hard drive. At any rate I would think that getting more ideas is better then just noty giving an idea, it is in the end up to horton what he wants to do
Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 10:54 pm
by Tormentius
I think the key is that the original primary partition was < 32GB and thats why the motherboard could see it and use it. Since he is trying to create a single large primary partition the motherboard's BIOS won't recognize the full capacity of the drive and tops off the max it knows how to address which is 32GB (common for older boards and something newer BIOS versions usually address).
Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 11:57 pm
by Kills On Site
Good point, I didn't think about the fact that the original primary partition was the 10GB. What are your system specs horton?
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 12:01 am
by Foo
Zero Fill is not Low-Level Format. Zero fill wouldn't do jack, and Low-Level Formatting is not something you can accomplish on modern drives.