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General discussion

80 Gb Hard drive can only read 32 Gb

Mar 16, 2005 8:38PM PST

Okay here is my story,
I brought a 80 Gb hard drive mid January as a second drive to my 20 Gb drive because I was running low on space. My mother board and CPU at that time were 4.5 years old (PIII 800 MHz). When I installed the second hard drive the bios only detected 32 Gb. I couldn't find any update for my bios and I didn't want to accidently reck my system so I just partitioned and formated the drive for the 32 Gb because I figured it was 32Gb more than I had before.

So this brings up to last week. Last Thurday my motherboard and CPU crashed. Don't know why, but the end result is I got a brand new motherboard and am now running a P4 3GHz system. I have my old drives in the new system and it is now saying I only have just over 2 Gb left on both hard drives. I am wondering if my 80 Gb drive can be repartitioned so I will be able to get my 50 Gb back that I lost. I know this motherboard shouldn't have a problem like my last one in reading drives over 32 Gb. So my question is can this be done? And will I lose the 30 Gb of files that are on the drive now? I am running Windows 98 SE if that helps.

Discussion is locked

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The answer has always been...
Mar 16, 2005 9:26PM PST

We only lose what we didn't backup.

With DVD recorders being in the sub 90 buck region, and a 10 pack of media som 20 bucks, for 99 bucks you could backup 47 gigabytes of files.

If the files are not worth 99 bucks, then you've revealed how much such is worth to you.

Moving a drive is often OK, but the number of posts where people lose it all is telling.

Bob

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To add
Mar 16, 2005 11:24PM PST

As Bob says, back up everything first. It was not mentioned that a jumper on the drive could be a limiting factor. Check the jumper/jumpers on the rear of the drive mostly used to configure master or slave. You might find one which limits the size to 32 gigs. This allows larger drives to be used in older systems that cannot handle them otherwise.

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80 Gb Hard drive can only read 32 Gb
Mar 29, 2005 3:16AM PST

There is a program called Partion Magic that will do this. BUT you still need to back up your data. John

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Woudln't FAT32 have caused this?
Apr 10, 2005 6:50AM PDT

I may be wrong, but given the age of his previous computer, it is quite likely that his previous comp. simply created 1 32Gb (max allowed on FAT32 (Windows98)) and ignored the other blank space. You should be able to regain it by repartitioning, but, like the others said, always backup before a partition.

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(NT) (NT) Goto HD support website for FAQ/clues &help+s/w
Apr 10, 2005 11:17PM PDT