large HD yet small C drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter EW105
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EW105

Bought a new 120 gig HD and installed WinXp. During the installation
process, somehow I ended up with a 2 gig C drive and the rest as the D
drive. How can I make the C drive bigger?
Thanks
 
EW105 said:
Bought a new 120 gig HD and installed WinXp. During the installation
process, somehow I ended up with a 2 gig C drive and the rest as the D
drive. How can I make the C drive bigger?
Thanks
Click to expand...

What are the specifications of your computer? (Make/model/CPU Type &
speed/BIOS version and machine age etc)

Does the BIOS correctly detect the full size of the drive? There are issues
with older motherboards not detecting the full size of larger HDDs so its
not a case of being able to put any drive in any machine and expecting it to
work without any problems.

Given that you've mentioned "the rest" of the 120 GB is detected as D drive
I suspect its a windows configuration/setup issue. How did you setup the
partitions when Win XP was installed - did you select the maximum amount you
could for C:? Have you tried deleting all partitions off the drive (using
the drives makers utility on a bootable floppy disk to "zero fill" it) and
then reinstalling? Some HDDs come with data already on them in the form of
drive makers utilities, if you've just installed XP onto such a partition,
that would explain things.

Paul
 
Paul Murphy said:
What are the specifications of your computer? (Make/model/CPU Type &
speed/BIOS version and machine age etc)
Click to expand...
This is a 3 year old computer, ASUS AV266-E MB. At the time of
installation it had the original BIOS (never updated til after win XP)
with again at the time 850 Duron (now 1300).
Does the BIOS correctly detect the full size of the drive?
Click to expand...
Doesn't look like it now that I've checked. This is a 160 gig HD after
all. not 120 as I had written originally. Yet it does show 2 gig for the
C drive and 120 (and some change) for the D drive if I check the
properties of each drive in the control panel.

In Bios, the specs are
Cylinders 1024
Sector 63
Head 255
 
I like to use the partitioning and setup programs from the hard disk
manufacturer and have got all the parameters set as I need.
Mikey
 
EW105 said:
This is a 3 year old computer, ASUS AV266-E MB. At the time of
installation it had the original BIOS (never updated til after win XP)
with again at the time 850 Duron (now 1300).

Doesn't look like it now that I've checked. This is a 160 gig HD after
all. not 120 as I had written originally. Yet it does show 2 gig for the
C drive and 120 (and some change) for the D drive if I check the
properties of each drive in the control panel.

In Bios, the specs are
Cylinders 1024
Sector 63
Head 255
Click to expand...

1) The motherboard will need to support 48 bit LBA if you want all 160 GB of
the HDD detected by it (see www.48bitlba.com for an explanation of what this
means). According to the Asus website here:
http://www.asus.com/support/faq/qanda.aspx?KB_ID=80085 you need at least ver
1007 or newer BIOS.
2) You must use a Win XP SP 1 or greater CD to install from (again see the
above link for an explanation).

What does the BIOS (not windows) report as the drives size (this will be in
the POST screen when you first switch the PC on and before windows starts
loading - note this means one value for where-ever the drive is connected eg
Primary Master, whats its version and have you set it for LBA mode?

Paul
 
Doesn't look like it now that I've checked. This is a 160 gig HD after
all. not 120 as I had written originally. Yet it does show 2 gig for
the
C drive and 120 (and some change) for the D drive if I check the
properties of each drive in the control panel.

In Bios, the specs are
Cylinders 1024
Sector 63
Head 255
Click to expand...

"Doesn't look like it now that I've checked". So what DOES it look
like? Is LBA (large block addressing) mode enabled in the BIOS?

Since you say that Windows XP can use a 120GB partition as the D drive,
your BIOS already supports larger partitions. The problem appears that
you screwed up during the Windows XP installation and selected to NOT
use all of the drive and specified to use only a small 2GB partition.
You could buy PartitionMagic to resize the partitions (make C bigger and
D smaller and recoup the 38GB still unaccounted for). However, since
this is a new install then you have little to lose at this point, so
instead of buying PartitionMagic just reboot using the Windows XP
installation CD and use it to delete your partitions and then make them
the size that you want.
 
This is a 3 year old computer, ASUS AV266-E MB. At the time of
installation it had the original BIOS (never updated til after win XP)
with again at the time 850 Duron (now 1300).
Click to expand...

A three-year-old computer will be able to recognize up to 137,000 MB, or
about 123 GB on a drive, so the 2+120 adds up.
Your motherboard probably can't give you the rest of the 160 GB drive. I
can't say how you ended up with a small primary partition; that sounds like
a minor, fleeting error in the setup process. You'll likely have to
reinstall unless you use Partition Magic.
 
Pelysma said:
A three-year-old computer will be able to recognize up to 137,000 MB, or
about 123 GB on a drive, so the 2+120 adds up.
Your motherboard probably can't give you the rest of the 160 GB drive.
Click to expand...
Thats what I thought until I checked on the Asus website - see my post and
link earlier in the thread.

Paul
 
Paul Murphy said:
Thats what I thought until I checked on the Asus website - see my post and
link earlier in the thread.

Paul
Click to expand...
In other words, probably the motherboard doesn't support it out of the box
but the BIOS can be upgraded and then it will. Frankly, I hadn't thought
of that.
 
This is a 3 year old computer, ASUS AV266-E MB. At the time of
installation it had the original BIOS (never updated til after win XP)
with again at the time 850 Duron (now 1300).

Doesn't look like it now that I've checked. This is a 160 gig HD after
all. not 120 as I had written originally. Yet it does show 2 gig for the
C drive and 120 (and some change) for the D drive if I check the
properties of each drive in the control panel.

In Bios, the specs are
Cylinders 1024
Sector 63
Head 255
Click to expand...

IMO, the best thing for you to do is start from scratch
again, because you updated the bios from one older AND
because of the drive partition size issue.

I suggest that you boot up the HDD manufacturer's utility
disk and do a full drive test- always a good idea before
relying on a drive. Then after it passes(?) that, use the
so-called "low level format" or "zero-fill" (or however your
particular HDD manufacturer worded it) to wipe everything
off of the drive - which of course means you lose ALL data
on it, so make backups if appropriate.

After drive is wiped, don't boot to DOS and partition it- I
wonder if that is what you did originally and ended up with
a FAT(16) partition. Anyway, you can just boot your windows
CD to install or if you want FAT32 then use a boot disk for
partitioning and formatting.
 
Pelysma said:
In other words, probably the motherboard doesn't support it out of the box
but the BIOS can be upgraded and then it will. Frankly, I hadn't thought
of that.
Click to expand...
EW105 (the OP) mentioned earlier in the thread that the BIOS had been
updated so hopefully there's a chance its already a suitable version - I'm
waiting to hear back. Bios upgrades quite commonly offer this functionality
(along with other improvements) but it depends on the hardware chips used in
the board as to what is acheivable.

Paul
 
I suggest you to make an image of the c partition (ghost). From the windows
floppy boot disk clean all partition an make only one. Then put back the
image.


Boba Vancouver.
 
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