pedro_sandchez Posted September 6, 2006 Share Posted September 6, 2006 So I recently picked up a 300 gig hard drive to put into my desktop. its an older system (1.7Ghz P4) but I only use it to store my music and dvr recordings. I've plugged the drive in and I completely reinstalled windows on the old drive (an 80 gig). The main drive (the 80Gb one) shows up in its entirety but when I open up microsoft management to setup the 300 gig drive, it only shows up as 31 gigs. I've formatted it and everything hoping it will recognize the whole disk but it isnt. This is my first time installing a new internal hard drive so perhaps I'm missing something? thanks guys, pedro Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baliw Posted September 6, 2006 Share Posted September 6, 2006 How old is your motherboard? Maybe it's a problem with your bios and doesn't support your new HD. Check your motherboard manufacturer site for an update. HTH Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
br0adband Posted September 6, 2006 Share Posted September 6, 2006 At first I thought he was talking about the 137GB issue but since he specifically mentioned 31GB that means he's trying to format that whole 300GB drive as FAT32, which isn't going to happen. FAT32 (at least as far as Windows formatting tools are concerned) has a limit of 31GB, that's the cap. So, you need to format that 300GB drive as NTFS, like it or not. It's the only way you're going to get full usage of the space under Windows. Hope this helps... bb Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pedro_sandchez Posted September 6, 2006 Author Share Posted September 6, 2006 it is currently formatted as ntfs and still only 31 gigs available Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
br0adband Posted September 6, 2006 Share Posted September 6, 2006 Possibly a defective drive then. If you open the drive in Disk Management, it should see the entire capacity of that hard drive regardless of the partition information already on it. If you don't see the full size of it, it's most likely damaged in some way. Might give some of the utilities on the Ultimate BootCD a go and see if they can pick up the full size. Good luck... bb Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xtreme571 Posted September 7, 2006 Share Posted September 7, 2006 Does the right model show up in the Device Manager? Same as listed on the box? Also, did u try to use any software that came with the disk? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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