Hard drive not showing full capacity

[Amodedude1]

Hi everyone. This my first post here at pcmech and would like to say how great of a site it is.

Anyway on to my problem. I have a Seagate st32008a hard drive I bought back in 2004. It's been workin fine untill I decided to re install windows Xp. :mad: After I reinsatlled, my system shows the hard drive as 32gb (33gb in the BIOS) as opposed to the full 200gb. Now before you crack down on me, I read the thread on hard drive capacity. Nothing in their helped. Btw, I am 120% sure that my jumpers are not limiting the drive to 32Gb ( it's an ultra ata drive).

Please someone help! I cannot live with a 32GB hard drive! :cool:

My motherboard is a DFI NF4 Lanparty. It's almost brand new so I'm sure it can't be the BIOS. Besides, it worked befoe at full capacity.

[EzyStvy]

Sounds like you formatted it as Fat32 that "has" a 32gig limitation during setup.

You'll either have to start over or go into Disk Management and create additional partitions.

[kilgoretrout]

EzyStvy undoubtedly has this one nailed. Just to expand winxp will not create a FAT32 partition greater than 32GB but it can see and use FAT32 partitions greater than 32GB created by other partitioning tools. This was built into winxp and win2k in order to encourage the use of NTFS. If you want to install to a FAT32 partition greater than 32GB, you will have to create that partition before doing the winxp install and install to the existing partition.

[Panama Red]

Fully expalined here:

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=118330

[glc]

If the bios is seeing it as only 33gb, you have it misjumpered. It's very easy to read the chart upside down - you have the cylinder limit jumper set instead of it jumpered to Master.

http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/ata/st3200822a.html

[Amodedude1]

No, The drive is in NTFs not FAT32, Also I have cheked the jumper settings about a thousand times! Do you think the drive could be breaking down? :confused: Help!!!

[Kareeser]

He stated in his original post that his jumper configuration was correct.

Amode - You'll have to expand the partitions by using a program like Partition Magic, or starting over and formatting the drive again, this time with correct partitions.

[Amodedude1]

Well, I did try this using the seatools cd that came with the harddrive and selected "grow Partition" and tried to grow the partition, and I also tried deleting the partition and reformating it when I first dried to install windows. But I guess I'll give partition magic, or something else (free mabey?:) ) a try anyway. Mabey seatools was messed up or something.

This is really buggin me. Do you think that it was just the fact that the partition is small and not the actual hard drive? Because like I said, it shows up as 33gb in the BIOS. Does the BIOS just look at the size of the partitions or the size of the partitions and unallocated space? :confused:

[glc]

No, the bios reads the ENTIRE capacity - and the ONLY things that will cause a healthy 200gb drive to show as 33gb are the limitation jumper or a noncompliant bios - one that has a 33gb limit.

Kareeser, did you look at the link I posted? It is VERY easy to look at the jumper block upside down.............I've done that myself several times. The chart on top of the drive does NOT show the power socket to give you a reference.

[Amodedude1]

:mad: No, the jumper is absolutely positively 1000% in the right spot. There is no way in he** it's wrong. By the way, I have also tried moving the jumper to every location on the drive including the 32gb limit setting and it's always the same!

Please, help. :)

[Panama Red]

At this point, i would suggest testing the drive with Seagate's diagnostic software to be certain the drive is still good. If it passes all the tests, use the same software to zero fill the entire drive and start over.

[acidburn]

i think you should change your file system

[Amodedude1]

i think you should change your file system

How is that going to help?

Also, I will try the zero fill, sounds like a good idea. I have tested the drive with seagate utility and it say's it's all good. :confused:
:rolleyes: Thanks for the great advice all. If this dosent work i'm going to trash the drive. :(