Hard DIsk Size Too Small

  • Thread starter Thread starter geezer
  • Start date Start date
G

geezer

I have a Seagate 160GB (supposedly) HDD. When I formatted it NTFS as
part of a new XP install, the result capacity of the HDD is only some
137GB.

Why is that? How can I get more space? Seems to me that 23GB of
overhead is ridiculous.

Thanks

Geezer.
 
geezer said:
I have a Seagate 160GB (supposedly) HDD. When I formatted it NTFS as
part of a new XP install, the result capacity of the HDD is only some
137GB.

Why is that? How can I get more space? Seems to me that 23GB of
overhead is ridiculous.

Thanks

Geezer.
Click to expand...
Par for the course. It`s the difference between using 1000 for a kilobyte,
which is the standard HD manufacturers use.
And 1024 for a kilobyte, which is what the rest of the computer world uses.
 
geezer said:
I have a Seagate 160GB (supposedly) HDD. When I formatted it NTFS as
part of a new XP install, the result capacity of the HDD is only some
137GB.

Why is that? How can I get more space? Seems to me that 23GB of
overhead is ridiculous.
Click to expand...

Go to Start->Settings->Control Panel->Administrative Tools

Click on Disk Management and see if you have any unused space on your hard
disk. Perhaps your machine has hit the controller limit at 137GB. BIOS
update perhaps? You should get over 150GB formatted space on a 160GB drive
(I think). Have you checked the drive - perhaps bad sectors are present, but
the 137GB size sounds a lot like a controller limit.
 
You most likely hit the barrier. Update your BIOS, or if it supports your
machine you can use the Intel Application Accelerator.
 
geezer said:
I have a Seagate 160GB (supposedly) HDD. When I formatted
it NTFS as
part of a new XP install, the result capacity of the HDD
is only some
137GB.

Why is that? How can I get more space? Seems to me that
23GB of
overhead is ridiculous.

Thanks

Geezer.
Click to expand...
You seem to be running into both a size limit
in your BIOS and the byte/bit situation. A 160 Gb
drive is actually about 149 GB.
 
There is a 128 GB (or 137 GB depending on how you measure) limit for original WinXP, and for many motherboards. If your system BIOS is up to date and you have SP1 or SP2 you should be able to access all of a 160 GB drive.
 
Well, the problem is one of two things; or both. Windows XP without SP 1
cannot recognize more than 137 GB of harddrive size. Also, slightly older
motherboard BIOS's can only recognize up to137 GB of harddrive size.
 
Back
Top