Partition reads smaller than actual drive

Midnite · 07-15-2007, 07:13 AM

My friend is having trouble formatting his hard drive. It seems pretty simple except for the fact that the hard drive isnt reading for 160 gigs (which is what it is), whenever trying to reinstall windows it recognizes the drive as just 32 gigs.

I came over to his place cause i thought he was just messing up, but no, its reading as 32. It had a 32 gig partition, deleted it, and unpartitioned space is raeding as 32.

used partition magic, etc, they all read the total drive as just 32 gigs, unpartitioned. making new partitions cant exceed the 32 anyway.

How do i get it back?

**Deleted090308** · 07-15-2007, 07:18 AM

Hi and welcome to TSF

What does BIOS "say" about the hard drive size? What OS is he running? What brand/model is the HDD?

ceri sheeran · 07-15-2007, 08:49 AM

Hi,

Check the drive jumpers. there is normally a drive jumper which can be used to limit the maximum size to 32GB.

Change it to Master or cable select depending on how the computer recognises drives. Master would be better.

What File System are you trying to use. FAT32 under XP is limited to a 32GB, larger partitions can be read but not created.

hth

Ceri

07-15-2007, 07:13 AM	#1 (permalink)
Midnite Registered User Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: USA-NJ Posts: 13 OS: WinXP OS2	Partition reads smaller than actual drive My friend is having trouble formatting his hard drive. It seems pretty simple except for the fact that the hard drive isnt reading for 160 gigs (which is what it is), whenever trying to reinstall windows it recognizes the drive as just 32 gigs. I came over to his place cause i thought he was just messing up, but no, its reading as 32. It had a 32 gig partition, deleted it, and unpartitioned space is raeding as 32. used partition magic, etc, they all read the total drive as just 32 gigs, unpartitioned. making new partitions cant exceed the 32 anyway. How do i get it back?

07-15-2007, 07:18 AM	#2 (permalink)
Deleted090308 Not... Join Date: Jan 2007 Posts: 22,277 OS: Xp	Re: Partition reads smaller than actual drive Hi and welcome to TSF What does BIOS "say" about the hard drive size? What OS is he running? What brand/model is the HDD? Last edited by Deleted090308; 07-15-2007 at 07:20 AM.

07-15-2007, 08:49 AM	#3 (permalink)
ceri sheeran Registered User Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 285 OS: WINXP	Re: Partition reads smaller than actual drive Hi, Check the drive jumpers. there is normally a drive jumper which can be used to limit the maximum size to 32GB. Change it to Master or cable select depending on how the computer recognises drives. Master would be better. What File System are you trying to use. FAT32 under XP is limited to a 32GB, larger partitions can be read but not created. hth Ceri