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General discussion

200 GB hard drive only reads 31.4

Jan 28, 2007 10:36AM PST

I know this is almost the same as the other tread but my case i feel is a little different with the computer i have.

I got an older comp from my brother and i was re-installing windows xp home and he had this 200 as his main but it was partitioned before and i wanted just one big drive.

when i installed windows it only read as 31.4

i have loaded new BIOS, i low level formatted using Maxblast4 and re-installed after that. im wondering if the upgrade disk it too old the disk is even before SP1 or if the drive is just going bad

Dell Optiplex GX240 1.6 GHz
512 RAM
200 GB Maxtor drive

any help would be great

Discussion is locked

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That's proper.
Jan 28, 2007 11:53AM PST

XP (without SP1 or SP2) has no support for both SATA and large drives. There is also other issues such as the owner picking FAT32 for the partition.

Bob

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Next steps....
Jan 29, 2007 3:28AM PST

So should i get all the updates will that bring the GBs back or what should i do to get it back reading close to 200

i forgot to mention that i put this drive into one of those enclosures to see what i read would that have done anything to is?

and its not SATA so thats not an issue the size is the issue i know

Thanks for the help

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No.
Jan 29, 2007 3:32AM PST

Sorry no. XP (the original) doesn't support large disks and you can't fetch the updates until after the OS is installed. Then you should be able to create another partition with the remaining space on another drive letter.

http://www.48bitlba.com notes this and some other machine limits on big drives.

Bob

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So...
Jan 29, 2007 3:42AM PST

If i got a newer XP cd like from staples or somewhere would this work i know i got the newest BIOS

And i know it was working before because i had it running with 2 partitions on it a 105 and an 85 i just want and when i installed windows it only showed 32280 MB

I really just want to know if there is a way to get this drive to show all 200 GB in one partition

thanks

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The link should explain that.
Jan 29, 2007 4:06AM PST

XP (no SP1/SP2) CDs are limited. It's also important you don't use third party partition tools. It's important to not select FAT32 and the BIOS show the full size.

As to the XP CD, I found it cheaper to ask Microsoft for a new CD.

Bob

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Ok
Jan 29, 2007 4:08AM PST

I didnt know i could just ask for a new one that cool and i will read more of the website i know i used Maxtor to zero the drive but i dont know if BIOS is reading the drive right or not