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Windows does not show full hard drive capacity

Discussion in 'Windows XP' started by jen626, 2004/10/24.

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  1. 2004/10/24
    jen626

    jen626 Inactive Thread Starter

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    Hi all,

    I am brand new to this forum, thank you for having me!

    I have two hard drives, both are Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm SATA hard drives, 160Gb a piece, for a total of 320GB.

    The problem is, in Windows XP Pro, it only shows my hard drives as 131GB each. In BIOS, they are both correctly shown as 160GB.

    I have SP1 installed. My BIOS is updated and does support 48-bit LBA, and the EnableBigLBA setting is turned on in the registry.

    Any ideas on how to make the whole drive show up otherwise?

    I should say that onthis computer I originally was running XP Pro without SP1, which was part of the problem. I reformatted the master hard drive, then installed XP Pro w/ SP1 already included (a new copy). But the drives still only show 127-131GB at most. I really don't want to buy a controller card for my hard drive just to fix this.

    Thank you for any suggestions.

    Jen

    Intel D865PERL mobo w/ updated BIOS
    Pentium 4 2.8ghz
    1024 ram
    Nvidia GeForce X5900XT 256mb
    Soundblaster Audigy 2
    320GB hard drive
    XP Pro SP1
     
    jen626,
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  2. 2004/10/25
    Christer

    Christer Geek Member Staff

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    Hi Jen and welcome to the Windows BBS!

    There is a difference in how disk size is calculated:

    one thousand = 1,000 = 10^3
    one million = 1,000,000 = 10^6
    one billion = 1,000,000,000 = 10^9

    The above on a base of 10 but the operating system reads binary, the base of 2:

    1k = 2^10 = 1,024
    1M = 2^20 = 1,048,576
    1G = 2^30 = 1,073,741,824

    So, when the sales department and the BIOS sees Your harddrive as 160 GB, then the operating system should see it as 160 / 1,073,741,824 = 149 GB ...... :confused: ...... but it doesn't.

    As I understand it, You reformated during the installation of XP-SP1 but You didn't remove and recreate the partition created by XP-RTM which was size limited.

    In WinXP Disk Management, check if there is unpartitioned space of 18-22 GB.

    Christer
     
    Christer,
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  4. 2004/10/25
    Scott Smith

    Scott Smith Inactive Alumni

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    Funny you should mention this because I have a simular situation but not as extreme as yours.

    I have 2 160GB Seagate ST3160023A which the specs can be seen here .

    I have them in RAID Zero and the Promise RAID Controller sees them as 320 GB. This is secondary storage so I was able to create the partition in Disk management in windows.

    Unpartitioned Windows sees the space as 305 GB, but after the partioning and formating it shows up as 298 GB. :confused: :confused: :confused:
     
    Scott Smith,
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  5. 2004/10/25
    Christer

    Christer Geek Member Staff

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    ssmith10pn,

    Well, I didn't tell the whole truth and nothing but ...... :eek: ...... :

    On the base of 10, the ST3160023A can get only one GB label no matter how the value is reached:

    It has 312,581,808 sectors of 512 bytes which makes 160,041,885,696 bytes:

    160,041,885,696 bytes
    160,041,885,696 / 1,000 = 160,041,885.696 kB
    160,041,885,696 / 1,000,000 = 160,041.885696 MB
    160,041,885,696 / 1,000,000,000 = 160.041885696 GB

    On the base of 2, the ST3160023A can get different GB labels depending on how the value is reached:

    It has 312,581,808 sectors of 512 bytes which makes 160,041,885,696 bytes:

    160,041,885,696 bytes
    160,041,885,696 / 1,024 = 156,290,904 kB
    160,041,885,696 / 1,048,576 = 152,627.835938 MB
    160,041,885,696 / 1,073,741,824 = 149.050621033 GB

    For some reason;

    - at one point Windows decides to use the 160,041,885,696 / 1,048,576 = 152,627.835938 MB option to display the size. Your RAID zero array will be reported as 2 times this = 305,255.671876 GB;

    - at another point Windows decides to use the 160,041,885,696 / 1,073,741,824 = 149.050621033 GB option to display the size. Your RAID zero array will be reported as 2 times this = 298.101242066 GB.

    Confusing ...... :p ...... don't ask me why it is like this but it is man made ...... :rolleyes: ...... and a "mix of both methods "!

    Christer
     
    Last edited: 2004/10/25
    Christer,
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  6. 2004/10/25
    Scott Smith

    Scott Smith Inactive Alumni

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    Wow! :d :d
     
    Scott Smith,
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