Hard drive bigger than it looks ???

I feel like a rookie posting this (and maybe I am when it comes to hard drives...), but I just ain't sure what to do, and could not find anything on this issue (what the heck to search for...), so here is hopefully a simple "problem" that you experts can educate me on...

The local-yocal down-home small-time techs down the street that rebuilt my PC about a year ago (that are amazingly still in business) insist that they sold me a 40 gig hard drive, of which I have consumed 12 gig to date, and probably will never exceed 20 gig.

Anyway. All available disk analyzing components indicate that the supposedly 40 gig drive is only a 31.5 gig drive. On questioning the techs about this, they say "don't worry ", inferring that if I ever exceed the the 31.5 gb barrier that it will automatically magically handle the situation, but seemingly preferring not to elaborate on any details of just how this transition will evolve and how it will be handled, just saying call us if that ever happens... Yeh, right, skeptical old me.

So, the point of all this is, I am considering partitioning the drive at 20/20 (or 20/12.5?). Somebody please fill me in on what happens when I do that, and any potential glitches in the process, and the best route to accomplish (I have perused the Lexunware scenario - is that a good way to go? any better procedures?)...

 

Typical of some not-so-scrupulous shops.
You probably do have a 40 gig hard drive, but the BIOS in your computer can only recognize 32 gig of it.

 

Thanks Steve...

Reboot/anyone:

QUOTE: "You probably do have a 40 gig hard drive, but the BIOS in your computer can only recognize 32 gig of it. "

Regarding the wording "recognize ": does that mean that only 32 gigs of the drive is actually "usable "?

And if I do partition, will I be able to do 20/20, or be stuck with 20/12, or some combo of 32?

The techs inferred, rather ambiguously, that if the 32 gig barrier was ever exceeded, that the drive would just keep on writing...

 

Because the BIOS can only "see" up to 32 gig, that's all you'll be able to use in Windows.
There are two ways around it.
1.) Update the BIOS, if there's one available for your motherboard, to recognize larger drives.
2.) Buy a PCI IDE controller card, aka ATA100 card, "promise" controller...
If you use these options, you'll have to fdisk, and reformat to recognize the full 40 gig, unless you have Partition magic, which will allow you to use the whole drive, with no loss of data.

I have no idea what the "techs" are referring to, as it sounds like a total copout from a wannabe that doesn't know what he's talking about.

 

Another possibility is to use a Disk Manager (Drive Overlay). These act as an interface between the HD and the BIOS so that the whole disk can be read.
I put one on when I had my current HD in my old machine and have kept it for my new. I have no problems with it, but they can be hard to remove (low level format). You need to press a key when booting from a floppy.
All the major HD manufacturers have them for download. You can get information on them at the manufacturers website.

I would check out whether a BIOS upgrade would work first.

Matt

 

I know this doesn't apply here but for an FYI on hard drives.

A 40 gig drive is not 40 gig. It's a math and marketing thing.

A 40 gig drive is 40,057,077,760 Bytes or 37.3 GB