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General discussion

My harddrive cut its size in half for no reason...

Mar 2, 2005 2:41AM PST

I have 2 harddrives, a D And C. When I reformated somehow my main harddisk the one my windows is running off of, named itself D and my backup named itself C. That was not a problem but not to long ago my D drive, the old 60GB HD that orginaly came with the computer cut its diskspace down to 31.1GB. Now its full and I dont know what to do. Sometimes I also try installing programs to my C and that says its out of diskspace too.
http://img239.exs.cx/img239/8823/untitled22kr.jpg

Computer specs: XP pro, P4 3.2, 1GBram, ATI9800xt, Sountblaster audigy II, one 120GB external USB firewire HD, one 80GB Internal, one 31.1 should be 60GB internal HD.

Discussion is locked

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When you reformated
Mar 3, 2005 9:21AM PST

did you use FAT-32 instead of NTFS. You would not need to reformat to reinstall XP, as it does this during the installation process. If you use FAT-32, XP will only make partitions of 32 gigs.

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nope its NTFS as u can see in my screen shot i dont know wha
Mar 3, 2005 1:58PM PST

nope its NTFS as u can see in my screen shot i dont know what to do

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hard drive cut in half
Mar 3, 2005 8:43PM PST

Your computer may have partitioned one drive into D and C, and not be even seeing the other hard drive. Try Partitionmagic. We used it to repartition our hard drive on the computer which came divided in two.

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rjlong is right and I'll tell you why
Mar 3, 2005 10:23PM PST

Cheer up buddy, all is not lost.

The solution is simple. Your bios, that little program that starts your computer has "lost" your 80mb disk. Open My Computer and look for an "E" drive. If you find no "E" drive right click "C" dive and look at "properties"; note the size then do the same for "D" drive. Together they should = ~ 60 gig telling you that, yes, "E" drive is lost. (If it equals 80 your other drive is "lost") Turn off your computer, get a cup of coffee, get comfortable. *Importante* If you have a cat or kid; kick 'em out and lock the door. Turn you computer on, watch fast and look for something to pop up right away such as "press f2 for setup" or "f2=setup". Press f2 and you will go into setup. Use your brain, you're in DOS mode and a mouse won't work. Look at bottom of screen for directions on how to navigate in the setup mode. If you screwup at this point you will usally be able to hit the escape key at which point you can choose to save or reject changes. If you screw up discard changes, reboot and start over.
Okay you're in setup mode. Navigate to hardisk drive installations, usually labeled primary drive 0 and primary drive 1. One of them should say "not installed". This is the setting you want. Change that setting to "auto-detect". Save changes and reboot to Windows. Check for "E" drive again. If it still refuses to appear it's because the operating system on the "E" drive, since it was your original "C" drive is still active and the newer installation is knocking the older installation out of the loop. They say it isn't supposed to happen, but believe me, it does. Try it out and write back. If the operating system is still kicking you off of your "E" drive I'l walk you through the steps of recovery using the Windows startup disk.

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RE: My harddrive cut its size in half for no reason.
Mar 3, 2005 10:18PM PST

The first step should be to go to your computer system BIOS and confirm that you have the correct hard disk configurations recorded in the BIOS.

I would also run SCANDISK to rule out any damage to your internal hard drives. With hard drives, the question should never be ?if a hard drive fails? but ?when a hard drive fails.? Naturally before you do this, you should have made a back up for all your important information.

I would also run your virus protection program to rule out any nasty little virus problem.

More questions for clarity. Did you recently upgrade your computer from a previous Windows version to the XP Professional? If so, did your previous operating system recognize the full 60 GB?

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(NT) (NT) ALT is right. See rjlon is right for instructions (end)
Mar 3, 2005 10:34PM PST
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Harddrive cut in half
Mar 4, 2005 11:59AM PST

I have done this twice myself as I don't reformat a drive very often. I get confused by some of the questions that windows xp asks and sometimes I go in circles...but as far as dividing itself in half ...well... that is a different story all together.
I wish I could help you there... just wonderering how it could do that...

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Check jumper settings
Mar 4, 2005 8:37PM PST

I had a similar problem when installing a hard drive in a USB external case a while back. My 80 Gig HD showed up as 32 Gig. After 20 years of experience and many HD installations I had never seen anything quite like this. It was an old HD that was a second drive in another computer. After I converted from FAT 32 to NFTS my 80 GIG drive became a 32 GIG drive. I tried reformatting, I tried Partition Magic, I tried removing it from the case and plugging it directly in the IDE cable as a slave drive , I tried a different computer! Nothing worked. Finally I got a brainstorm and changed the setting from "cable select" as recommended by the manufacturer of the external case to "master" and presto! Problem solved. I know this shouldn't matter but in this case it did.

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Reply to My hard drive is cut in half
Mar 5, 2005 6:56PM PST

When you installed your second hard drive did you connect it in the slave position? If not try reversing their positions. If that doesn't work you might have a hardware problem i.e. BIOS could need reset. If all else fails; back up your files and settings and reformat both drives. Make sure the new one is in the position the old one was in and it should work ok.
Bob J.

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help
Jul 23, 2007 6:42PM PDT

what you might need to do is go on to disk clean up then when is has done that you need to go on to more options then look for clean up
system restor and shadow copies after that click onto cleanup you might be able to get at least 1gb back. and their is also window washer to dounload that also frees hard drive space.