HD capacity question: Hope this is not silly

Dear PC Users,

I just bought a new PC with a 200GB HD. It's a Western Digital. WD2000JB--00GVC0. But when I tried to install Windows XP on it, the menu says that I only have about 131GB in the unpartitioned space. Does this make sense?

Thank you for your thoughts and answers.

 

Alan6--What do you mean by "unpartitioned" space? The whole hard drive? Or is there other "partitioned" space? You can see how your drive is partitioned (and if it is), by going to Control Panel|Administrative Tools|Computer Management|DiskManagement.
I know the above applies to WinXP Pro. Not sure about WinXP Home.
If not you may have to buy a partitioning program, like Partition Magic.
When you click My Computer|right click on C:\|Properties|how large is the "Capacity "?

 

I suggest you run the Western Digital utilities "Lifeguard" and try partitioning it with those. It sounds like a 128Gb "limitation ".

Matt

 

I thought that XP didn't have the 128gig limit??

 

Hi Jay,

I don't neccessarily mean a Windows limitation (although someone mentioned a limitation for XP in one of the posts a while back). I am thinking of a BIOS limitation. The drive utilities should identify it if there is one. The drive utilities should also identify if the drive has not been set properly in the BIOS settings.

I have a 2001 machine and although I could have purchased a lot larger drive for it, I got a 120Gb since I thought there may have been a possibility of BIOS limitation for a drive larger than 128Gb. I may have been paranoid, but if there was a limitation, it would be a "pain ".

If there does seem to be a limitation Alan6, you may need to consider doing a BIOS upgrade (if the motherboard manufacturer has gone to the trouble of making one).

Matt

 

Mattman, If, in a case of a bios limit, would partitioning a 200gig drive as say 2 100gig partitions, get around the limit as it would on win limits or would the bios still look at the entire drive.

As far as the actyal issue with this thread... If you have any trouble with partitioning software with the drive try booting with a win 98 bootdisk and partitioning with fdisk. You will have to partition into smaller partitions. You might want to consider three partitions such as 75gig, 75gig, and 50gig where 75 is for OS and installed software, 75 for data, and 50 for downloads and working on... Of course you would partition as to sizes that actually fit your needs.

If you don't have a 98 boot just go HERE and download 98 OEM. You will need to run the program and it will make a boot disk for you.

Your drive will now be partitioned and formatted as FAT 32. If you want to use NTFS, especially to get around the 4gig file size limit, just allow XP to format the install partition as NTFS when installing. Once XP is installed you can use XP to reformat other partitions as NTFS if desired. I would recomment that you leave one partition as FAT 32.

You can also use multiple partitions for a dual boot. If you have an install CD for say win 98, you can install that first on a smaller FAT 32 partition and then install XP on the main partition and XP will take care of the dual boot for you. You will end up with a menu on boot to choose which OS you want to run. At least XP Pro will do it for you. I figure that home will also but can't say for sure.

 

Thx & clarification

Dear all,

Thanks for your thoughts. I don't know if this is related to windows because I have not even installed Windows XP onto it yet. It's a virgin new hard disk that has not been formatted.

I inserted the Windows XP CD and after some loading a serious of menus appear and asked me what I would like to do. The info on Unpartitioned space appear after I pushed F8 to continue with Windows installation and the same page asked me if I would like to install windows in the designated drive, create or delete a partition, or quit.

Is there such thing as formatting the HD in NTFS format and the 200GB will appear automatically?

I am hesitant to actually try formatting it in case I need to take it back to the vender for an exchange or a refund.

Once again, thank you.

 

Alan6,
This may be a solution from Microsoft found here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/325590

 

Problem solved but still lost

Dear all,

Once again thx for the support.

I decided to format the empty HD anyway. Initially still getting about 130GB only. But interestingly somehow later, the capacity went back to the supposed 190GB.

So, my problem is solved but I still have no idea what went wrong.

 

Thanks for letting us know. Sometimes it just goes wrong the first time

Matt