XP won't see entire 320 GB drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Barbara Clark
  • Start date Start date
B

Barbara Clark

Greetings all,

Been wrestling with this for days now. I re-installed XP on a brand
new WE3200AAKS SATA drive after my old disk crashed. The original XP
disk was not SP2 (maybe not even SP1) but Windows Update did all of
the latest downloads to bring it to SP2 and is current as of today
(jan26 '08).

The properties of the C drive show 137 GB, but it is a 320 GB drive.
Disk Manager is showing 2 partitions on the new C: drive. The first
being 127.99 GB, Healthy primary (System) and the 2nd is 170.1 GB
unallocated. Why did this 2nd partition get created, how can I use it
and is it possible to make it contiguous with the first one? I wanted
to have one huge C: drive with 320 GB of space.

WD shows no driver updates for this drive. Device manager shows all is
working properly.

Thanks,
Barb
 
Hi Barbara,

Since the install CD that you used did not include SP2 or perhaps not even
SP1, then it would only recognize up to 137G of a larger hard drive. Have a
look at this MSKB article:

How to enable 48-bit Logical Block Addressing support for ATAPI disk drives
in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=303013

Since you did update to SP2 following the install, XP can now recognize the
entire size of the hard drive, that's why the remainder of the hard drive
shows as unallocated space.....the full size of the drive was not included
in the install because XP was not able to recognize the full size of the
drive.

If you want to incorporate the remainder of the hard drive space into the C
drive, you have a couple of choices:

1) Run Setup again, using an XP slipstreamed with SP2 install CD that you
create, deleting the current C partition and then creating a new partition
that incorporates the entire size of the drive, formatting it and installing
XP on it. If you don't know how to create a bootable XP with SP2 install CD,
there are a couple of utilities that can help you with this process.
Autostreamer -
http://www.simplyguides.net/guides/using_autostreamer/using_autostreamer.shtml

nLite - http://www.nliteos.com/nlite.html

2) Use a third-party partitioning utility, such as Partition Magic or
Partition Commander (to name just a couple) to incorporate the remainder of
the space into the C partition



Regards,
 
Barbara Clark said:
Greetings all,

Been wrestling with this for days now. I re-installed XP on a brand
new WE3200AAKS SATA drive after my old disk crashed. The original XP
disk was not SP2 (maybe not even SP1) but Windows Update did all of
the latest downloads to bring it to SP2 and is current as of today
(jan26 '08).
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, the updates can't fix the problem retroactively.

To work, they have to be in place on the CD at the beginning of the
install - when you create the partition.
The properties of the C drive show 137 GB, but it is a 320 GB drive.
Disk Manager is showing 2 partitions on the new C: drive. The first
being 127.99 GB, Healthy primary (System) and the 2nd is 170.1 GB
unallocated.
Click to expand...

OK, so the BIOS recognises the full size of the drive (and this is good),
but when you did the initial install, your XP CD could not see the whole
thing.

Clearly, you have a pre-SP1 CD. At SP1 this was fixed.
Why did this 2nd partition get created,
Click to expand...

There actually *isn't* a 2nd partition, yet. That's what unallocated
means - it's just empty and undefined space.
how can I use it
Click to expand...

At the moment, the simplest thing to do would be right-click on My Computer,
choose Manage, then Disk Management; right click on the unallocated section
and create a partition and then format it, and assign a drive letter. It
will get the letter after the CD/DVD and any other drives (like SD card
readers). You can change these assignments.
and is it possible to make it contiguous with the first one? I wanted
to have one huge C: drive with 320 GB of space.
Click to expand...

In order to have done that, you would have had to slipstream your XP CD
first, or, partition and format the hard disk while the drive was connected
to a working, post-SP1 XP system.

To do it now, you must use a 3rd party utility, unless you want to wipe the
drive and start over AFTER slipstreaming your XP CD (which you should do
anyway).

One way that you can do this, *if* you have another hard disk handy, is to
use a cloning utility, such as the Acronis TrueImage Home free trial. In
Manual mode, the clone-disk function allows you to change the destination
partition size. So you would clone to the other hard disk, then swap, and
clone back to the original 320 gig disk, telling it to use the full disk.
You might need to clear the drive first. While this sounds involved,
you'd likely be done in under 90 minutes, partiticularly if you had another
system that you could host both drives in.

Acronis Disk Director may also allow you to change the current system
partition size, as does Partition Magic.

Note that when you're reading things on partitioning tools, that the rules
are sometimes different for the system partition. You need to be clear on
this.


For slipstreaming, google "Slipstream XP" and "Autostreamer". You also
need the full XP SP2 file, which is around 266 meg. For that, Google "XP
SP2 IT".

The second hit for me is this page, which is the download page for SP2:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...BE-3B8E-4F30-8245-9E368D3CDB5A&displaylang=en

Don't run the file after you donwload it; you will put your install CD into
the drive, start Autostreamer, and point it to the CD and to the SP2 file.
It will then create an image of a new XP CD with SP2 already applied.
Should you need to do a repair install, you won't have to get SP2 first.

From there, if you *want*, you can boot from CD, and start over, deleting
and re-creating the partition.

There are two caveats: Some OEM cds can't be slipstreamed as they have other
updates applied. Dell disks are often in this class If that's the case for
you, contact the vendor to see if they can sell you an updated CD.

The other caveat is that this just can't be done with Restore Disk sets.
There, your only chance is to create and format the partition on another
system.

If your XP version is Pro, not Home, and the PC isn't a laptop, you might
be able to convert the disk to dynamic, and then you can merge volumes.
But that carries other considerations, particularly in the area of backups,
and you want to educate yourself thoroughly about it *first*.

WD shows no driver updates for this drive. Device manager shows all is
working properly.
Click to expand...

Yes, the problem occurred at the point where you created the system
partition with a pre-SP1 CD. The drive is working fine, and clearly the
BIOS supports it since you see the unallocated section.

HTH
-pk
 
or if you don't mind dynamic disk, you can convert the existing c: try
converting C; to dynamic using disk manager as another post, and add to it
the rest of the unallocated space.

I personally dislike dynamic disk.
 
Just to add a footnote to the excellent advice given to you by others, be
advised that regardless of how you partition the drive, it will be shown in
Windows as having a total capacity of approximately 298 GB versus the
anticipated 320 GB. This variance is due to the different measurement systems
used by the drive manufacturer (decimal = base 10) and Windows operating system
(binary = base 2). Nothing is lost. In either case, you will still have
320,000,000,000 bytes of storage space. See this tech article for more details
on this subject:

Why is my drive displaying a smaller than expected capacity than the indicated
size on the drive label?
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc...3B2PSZwX2N2PSZwX3BhZ2U9MQ**&p_li=&p_topview=1

Good luck!
 
Greetings all,

Been wrestling with this for days now. I re-installed XP on a brand
new WE3200AAKS SATA drive after my old disk crashed. The original XP
disk was not SP2 (maybe not even SP1) but Windows Update did all of
the latest downloads to bring it to SP2 and is current as of today
(jan26 '08).

The properties of the C drive show 137 GB, but it is a 320 GB drive.
Disk Manager is showing 2 partitions on the new C: drive. The first
being 127.99 GB, Healthy primary (System) and the 2nd is 170.1 GB
unallocated. Why did this 2nd partition get created, how can I use it
and is it possible to make it contiguous with the first one? I wanted
to have one huge C: drive with 320 GB of space.

WD shows no driver updates for this drive. Device manager shows all is
working properly.

Thanks,
Barb
Click to expand...

Here is how to sort it

Start/run/regedit
(if unsure export registry for safety)
select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
navigate to system/services/atapi/parameters or
system/currentcontrolset/services/atapi/parameters
right click for new
Select Dword name it EnableBigLba (take note of case)
set value to 1
end regedit
reboot

Borge in sunny Perth, Australia
 
Consider a disk manager utility such as Acronis or Partition Magic to use
the unallocated space to extend "C".
 
Hi Barbara,

Since the install CD that you used did not include SP2 or perhaps not even
SP1, then it would only recognize up to 137G of a larger hard drive. Have a
look at this MSKB article:

How to enable 48-bit Logical Block Addressing support for ATAPI disk drives
in Windows XPhttp://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=303013

Since you did update to SP2 following the install, XP can now recognize the
entire size of the hard drive, that's why the remainder of the hard drive
shows as unallocated space.....the full size of the drive was not included
in the install because XP was not able to recognize the full size of the
drive.

If you want to incorporate the remainder of the hard drive space into the C
drive, you have a couple of choices:

1) Run Setup again, using an XP slipstreamed with SP2 install CD that you
create, deleting the current C partition and then creating a new partition
that incorporates the entire size of the drive, formatting it and installing
XP on it. If you don't know how to create a bootable XP with SP2 install CD,
there are a couple of utilities that can help you with this process.
Autostreamer -http://www.simplyguides.net/guides/using_autostreamer/using_autostrea...

nLite -http://www.nliteos.com/nlite.html

2) Use a third-party partitioning utility, such as Partition Magic or
Partition Commander (to name just a couple) to incorporate the remainder of
the space into the C partition

Regards,
Click to expand...

Patti,

Thanks for helping me with this....the problem with slipstreaming is
that since my install disk is pre-SP1, slipstreaming won't work. I
ended up solving the problem by using Norton Save & Restore, and it
has an option to "expand the space to the destination drive." It
worked!
 
Patti,

Thanks for helping me with this....the problem with slipstreaming is
that since my install disk is pre-SP1, slipstreaming won't work. I
ended up solving the problem by using Norton Save & Restore, and it
has an option to "expand the space to the destination drive." It
worked!
Click to expand...

You're welcome for the help :-)

Slipstreaming should still work even if your install disk is pre-SP1.

Glad to hear that you were able to solve the problem.



Regards,
 
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