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bmxjt

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Hello all, I recently purchased a used 40 gig HD from someone. I have had a hell of a time getting it installed. It's a Maxtor, and I didnt discover right away that the software that comes with Maxtor drives for this specific HD isnt XP compatible. Sooo, I have been using the Disk Management in XP to create the partition and format the drive. Now the problem I am getting is that only 31 gigs show available.

When I first installed the HD, it showed 38 gigs total and the bozo who I got it from still had all of his WIN98 and personal stuff on it. I should have just formatted it from there I am guessing and maybe I could have somehow kept 38 gigs, but I didnt of course. Nothing seems to be THAT easy.

So anyway, I am guessing maybe I need a BIOS flash for my pc to read the 40 gigs. If I go ahead and install system files and whatnot on this drive and later do the flash, and say my pc can NOW read the full amount, will I be able to use that extra space without having to format or delete files? I guess what I am saying is, can I enlarge a partition or create a new one with that space?

thanks.. sorry for the lengthy message
 
maxtor

Hello, I had many problems with my Maxtor 40 gig as well..they are hell..Mine only shows up 38.1 gig so when you see 38 I think that might be all you're getting..It has happened twice..Just create a partition through the windows xp cd, and just delete any partitions that show up and then have xp create one with full harddrive. Goodluck, takes an hour or two to get everything going.
 
The reason why you have 31gb instead of the 38Gb, you say your drive has is because when you create an NTFS partition, NO MATTER WHAT SIZE, XP always leaves 8 spare for the NTFS file system to process and store verification and descriptor details.

Thes nothing wrong with your drive.

As for only getting 38 instead of 40, HDDs are NEVER exactly the size they say, they are either slightly bigger (eg 40.--gb or slightly less like your 38, again alot of new HDDs nowadays have spare capacity part of the SMART thing I think.


Stuy_b
 
follow up to study_b

Not really..I have a 40, and I did NTFS and it didn't take 8 Gig..It only took about 1.5 - 2...So that isn't necessarily true.
 
its happened to me on every install and with different drives.

:rolleyes:

stuy_b
 
Well it may be your HD..try doing FAT and see if it takes 8 gig again then if it does it is probably your HD..
 
Had a simillar problem.

I have a 41 Gig HDD, but my PC only detected 31 Gig in the BIOS, and I thought that this was because of a BIOS HDD Capacity limitation, which is 32 Gigs in older BIOS's.

Mine was a new Motherboard, and it turned out to be, a jumper setting that I had to change at the back of the HDD, and not a BIOS Problem.

Mines an IBM DeskStar. It was configured at the jumper setting as a Matser 32 GB Capacity Limit HDD, as factory preset, but I had to chage the jumper settings to Master 16 Head. The Bios reads it as 41 Gig now, but Win Xp reads it as about 38 or 39 gig, this is using NTFS, so I can guess that about 1.5 to 2 gigs are taken up for the NTFS file structure.

However, I had to re-format it the HDD and re-install Win Xp, but it crashed when I used the Xp boot disk, every time it came to about 83% format, probably because I've never used the other part, but after using some IBM software to format the whole drive, it was alright.
 
thanks for all of your help. I have actually formatted in both NTFS and FAT32. Both leave out 8 gig. I am actually thinking its a jumper setting. I had it set to Master J50 but my bios wouldnt recognize it. So i had switched to limited j46 and that might be what is causing it to read only 31 gigs. I will try setting it back to j50 and put in through the BIOS the limited Cylinder/Head amount and see if that changes anything.
 
...

Ok, here we go:

Problem 1.) The reason why a 40 Gb HD will say it can only hold 38.XX Gb is because during the partition information and the file system take up space on the HD, the indexing service etc.

Problem 2.) You may have allowed your PC to leave a separate partition for this idot who had all his old win98 stuff on it still.

Solution:

Get a Win98 Startup disk, tell your BIOS to boot from the floppy drive and insert the disk.

At the "A:\>" type "fdisk." It should look like this (without the quotes)

"A:\>fdisk"

Tell it to enable large disk support by hitting "Y" when it asks. At the main menu, find an option that says "Display Partition Information" (I think it is option 3, but make sure). Write down EXACTLY what it says (the whole screen) and post that here. Please don't try to do anything before you post that here.
 
OK. I will try that first. I do have a win98se boot disk. I originally did try the fdisk through the boot disk, and I think I did create an extended partition. However, I will try it again and post the results.

The 7-8 gig partition that you stated that may be there does sound like it could be because when I looked through all the junk that was there, there was only about 7-8 gigs used up on the entire drive. But, I would think that the partition would show up on Disk Management in XP.
 
ok Dejav00, here is what it shows for the NEW HD . Both do not show at once on this screen.


DISPLAY PARTITION INFORMATION

Current Fixed Drive: 2

Partition Status Type Volume Label Mbytes System Usage
D: 1 PRI DOS New Volume 32248 FAT32 100%



Total Disk Space is 32248 Mbytes (1 Mbyte = 1048576 bytes)



Hope this helps.
 
Definately a Jumper Setting or Bios Prob.

Its definately a jumper setting on your HDD, or a BIOS Capacity Limitation. The partition info seems to show that the full deteceted HDD space is being used by your Primary DOS, which is equal to the BIOS Capacity Limitation with older Mobos, 32.5, with about i Gig taken for the partition info, leaving 31.49 Gigs free on your HDD, which was what mine was detected as, before I changed the Jumper setting.
 
well, this is set with the jumper at j46. Anytime I put it as j50, my bootup locks up. I am guessing now maybe it is my bios needing to be flashed.

If I were to get an ATA/100 Raid card, and hook it up through that, is it possible all 40 gigs would be recognized? I think I had read this on the Maxtor site. Not sure tho.
 
Whats your bios company, Award or the other one, and also, what evrsion is it, it must be a problem with your bios. Older bioses tend to have these kinfd of problems. Your Win Xp does read your HDD information form your bios, so if its a problem with only 31 gis being deteceted, then thats the problem.
 
since your bios flash didnt help the situation, maybe you should look at formatting using the maxBlast utility provided by maxtor. I had a problem with a 34gb maxtor only being recognized as 2gb on a really old system and the maxtor utility did the trick. Last time i checked it wasnt compatable with xp, but they planned on releasing a new version with support for xp.

edit: i just checked and their site says that they plan on releasing a new version some time in April 2002 that will support xp so keep a lookout.
 
Go here: http://maxtor.com/products/diamondmax/software/maxblast/

Read up on the maxblast utility and run it on your drive. It may need to install something like EZbios or somesuch so that all your drive is recognized by your OS. I think the utility will be able to identify whether or not your m/b will support the drive or need to install ezbios (or something like that). Good luck.

Oh yeah, if you set up your drive using this utility... it will wipe the drive clean so be sure to back up the goodies.
 
Good catch AmarSingh.

I'm a little confused about this xp compatiblity thing (in reference to maxblast). Are you saying it won't create the boot disk from XP? If that's the case then you may need to borrow someone's computer (local library?) to create your maxblast utility diskette. Once you have the diskette it really doesn't matter what OS is on the drive because you need to run the utility after booting from the diskette. Again... setting up the drive will wipe it clean so do a backup.

I just noticed at that link AmarSingh provided that you can create the diskette from DOS - you can use that bootable floppy you created for flashing your bios to boot up, navigate to the file you downloaded (mbplus2.exe), run it and it should prompt you for another floppy to insert. Worth a shot.
 
well, i up'd my bios o the latest that was available and still it wont read all 40 gigs
 

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