Windows Vista Vista took half my HD.....

A few days I ago I purchased a brand new 120gig Maxtor drive to install Vista on.... Now the entire system meets or exceeds the requirements MicroSoft suggests....

On installation I formatted the hard drive during the installation process.
It formatted no problem (showed no errors) but then about 2/3 of the way through the install process I was told there was a problem installing Vista and it could not continue. At this point there were no errors codes etc. so I thought I would just start over again and see if it was just a little glitch.

After rebooting and entering fdisk to clear the drive it showed it as only being a 56.7 gig drive, showed no other partitions (DOS or Non DOS). It also should this when I booted with a boot disk and simply typed the DIR command for c: . I did attempt a re-install anyways but again Vista only showed it as a 56.7 gig drive....

On another system I went to the Maxtor site and downloaded the appropriate hard drive "repair" utility (I think thats what they called it) but again when I went to use it to reset the drive and get it ready for use, it to also only showed 56.7 gigs... I attached it to another computer, but again the other computer shows it as 56.7 gigs....

Anyone have any idea how I can get the other half of the drive back??

 

What does the BIOS show? What size partition did you make? You can't format a disk without making a partition first, unless it came partitioned, and then you'd see the size. A simple fdisk should suffice, although Steve's suggestion will work as well (but IS more work).

If BIOS sees less than 100 Gb, return it.

 

sparrow... the bios showsd it as a 122gig..



Steve R Jones... I did what you suggested and YES it showed a ton of disk unallocated space.

Before I even attempted to install vista I did run Fdisk and at that time it recognized it as the proper size.... I kept the drive as one complete drive ( I didn't split into c, d, e, etc) and then exited from Fdisk... (I am very familiar with Fdisk, so I know there were no mistakes made there..)

I rebooted and allowed Vista Install DVD to proceed.. Vista then told me I needed to format the drive, which I allowed it to do, using the NTFS format... once that was completed the installation continued (Vista did show it as a 122gig drive aswell). Up to this point there absolutely no errors what so ever.... Then at a point (and I'm guessing), about 2/3 of the way through
I was told there was a problem and could not continue... also no error codes were shown.... and that was it....

Still even now... the bios shows it as a 120... but nothing else does...

Although when I did do as Steve R Jones suggested, it showed a ton of unallocated space, I cannot access it ( or atleast I can't find a way) fdisk doesn't not show any Non-DOS partitions and actually it says something like the only partition is C: but shows it as 56.7 gigs..... Even if I remove that partition, it still only shows 56.7 gigs.... nothing more...

 

Most likely a partition table error or a Dynamic Drive Overlay, installed by the Maxtor tool. Do a zero fill on the drive with something like Killdisk or just wipe the first 63 sectors with mbrwiz. Then just let the Vista install do everything. If you still have problems you should check the drive for bad sectors with the relevant Maxtor diagnostic utility or Windows chkdsk.

 

I tried this but Windows will not allow it.... although it shows 56.7 gigs of space and alot of unallocated space.... I get an error that more or less says there is not enough room to create another partition....

When I first connected this drive I never ran the "Maxtor Tool" on it.... it wasn't needed at the time.....

I have tried other programs like killdisk etc.. to hopefully save this drive but again the only thing showing it as a 120gig, is the bios.... everything else says 56.7gig.... And even before Vista was to be installed the bios, fdisk, etc all showed it as a 120..... it wasn't until after the installation began, that everything changed....

 

After trying everything suggested here and everything I could think of and what other techs suggested and tried and after many many emails to and from MicroSoft I've come to the conclusion my brand new 120 gig hard drive was made completely unusable (except for 56gigs).

I'm not going to go into what exactly was discussed with MicroSoft but I will say that even MicroSoft has told me in writing that the installation was responsible for the hard drive problem. MicroSoft has agreed to replace my drive, which is unusual because I really didn't think they would but they actually offered it to me. Strange considering the user agreement says they are not responsible.

But even though Vista did in the hard drive, I will again try to install Vista again, when I recieve the new drive, which should be in the next few days.