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General discussion

Lost Drive Capacity

Dec 4, 2006 1:20PM PST

I slaved my 250GB hard drive into one of my older computers. The BIOS on this computer was not able to recognize the full capacity of my hard drive. But before I realized this I somehow managed to reestablish the available disk space of this 250GB hard drive to a much smaller capacity. Now, even if I slave it into a newer computer that will recognize it's full capacity, I only have available the much lesser size.

Is it possible to correct this and gain back the hard drives full capacity?

Thanks in advance.

Discussion is locked

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Do you have data on the drive.the 250GB you need to save ?
Dec 4, 2006 1:33PM PST

Partition Magic or Acronis Disk Director will realign/resize the HDD
without loss of data. As always, backup before taking this on.

VAPCMD

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RE: Do you have data on the drive.the 250GB you need to sav
Dec 4, 2006 1:44PM PST

Fortunately there is no data on the drive. So I have nothing to loose. I'll try one of the programs you suggested. Thanks!

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Don't spend money until you account for 48-bit LBA issues
Dec 4, 2006 6:09PM PST

Hard drives larger than 137GB have issues with certain operating system versions and hardware. The solutions are described at http://www.48bitlba.com.

What operating system are you using?

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Forgot to add that you can...
Dec 4, 2006 6:15PM PST

...delete all partitions, create one large partition (or as many as you wish), and then format the drive in Disk Management in XP. No need to purchase third party software.

If the drive won't show in Disk Management, you might need to wipe it with Killdisk or DBAN, and then initialize it Disk Management.

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Lost Drive Capacity
Dec 5, 2006 1:43AM PST

XP Home Edition. The hard disk has no partitions on it. When viewed under Disk Management, it only shows 31.49GB unallocated disk space. I don't know how this happened when it should have 250GB available.

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Use NTFS, not FAT32
Dec 5, 2006 3:35AM PST

Go to Disk Management, delete all partitions, create one partition in NTFS (not FAT32).

What is the make and model of the HD? Some have jumper settings to limit size.

XP Home is SP1, SP2, no service pack installed? You need to have at least SP1 (just get it to SP2).

If the HD is connected directly to the motherboard, tell us the make and model of the computer. If the hard drive is connected to a PCI hard disk controller card, then tell us the make and model of the PCI card.

Some references:
http://www.48bitlba.com/winxp.htm
http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/capacity/index.html