Another Hard drive size problem

[Karnevil9]

I've read a few posts here and some fixes on the Maxtor site and Microsoft site and they don't seem to address this particular problem.

I have a Maxtor 200 GB hard drive running Windows XP Pro. No other operating systems or partitions or hard drives on this computer. The windows XP C: drive icon in "My Computer" list the hard drive as 50 GB in my properties. The bios recognizes it as 194,000 MB, device manager says it is a 194,000 MB space hard drive but the little window below shows the same windows XP C: drive icon with it's 49,000 MB space. I am rounding out some of these numbers for simplicity.

I did a repair install of XP hoping it would shake up something but when the dust settled it was still a 50 GB hard drive. I down loaded a free trial version of Partition Magic to see if I could fix it with that but PM shows a full, good, single partition 200GB space, so as far as it's concerned everything is just dandy.

I backed up everything to a USB 120 GB hard drive thinking I might do a clean install but then thought since the repair install didn't change anything, I might be going through a lot of effort for nothing. That's why I am here. Any solutions or advice would be wonderful.

For the record, I didn't try anything with f/disk because I am not sure I am savy enough to mess with that. I have been in it at an earlier time but I was like a deer in the headlights.

[LeftyAce]

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

But 50GB is an odd size for a drive to be stuck at.

Does your Windows CD have service pack 2 on it? If so, re-installing and deleting all partitions during the process should fix your problem. If not, follow these instructions to add SP2 to a windows installation disk: http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sp2_slipstream.asp

[Panama Red]

Take a close look at the jumpers on that drive. Sounds like you may have installed a jumper in the Limiting position instead of in the Master. Use the Cable Select (CS) jumpering and see if that makes a difference.

[Karnevil9]

Lefty Ace. Yes the XP system has service pack 2. When I did the repair install I reinstalled service pack 2 and still no change. I agree, 50 GB is a weird place to be stuck at and so far everything I read about hard drive size problems talks about limitations of 30 GB with windows 98 I think and the 130 GB limitation prior to service pack 2. I am stuck above 30 but way below 130. I would be happy if I could get up to 130 GB's at the moment.

Panama, I forgot to mention in my first post that another fix I tried was changing the jumpers from the original CS configuration and changed it to master. No change. While I am thinking of it the drive has a pin set up like this : : : . : The first three is where you place the jumper for CS, Master, Slave. The last upper right pin has what appears to look like a one pin jumper if that makes any sense. I mean it doesn't connect any pin to another pin. According to Maxtor that is suppose to be a neutral pin that doesn't do anything. I tried to remove the jumper covering the pin but it seemed as if it might be actually be part of the plastic drive housing and not a removable jumper at all. Any Ideas on that? Anyone familiar with that pin set up for Maxtor drives?

[minsonngo]

When you go into disk management do you see the missing hard drive space?


Does your Windows XP CD have SP2 on it already or did you update to SP2 AFTER the OS was installed?


When you installed the OS intially... did you make the "C" partition 50GB?

[Karnevil9]

When I go into disk management it says in the top screen Windows XP Pro C: Partition basic NTSF healthy system, 49.75 GB , 16 GB free space, 33 % free no fault tolerance 0% overhead.

Then the bottom screen says, Disk 0, windows XP Pro, C: 189.92 GB NTSF, Healthy system.

Side question. What is meant in actions convert to dynamic drive?

SP2 was added after the system install via a disk I made from Microsoft when SP2 was first out.

I didn't make any partitions when I first installed the disk, or later when I did the repair install. But now that my memory is jogged I think I had a failed install of damm small linux some time ago. However Partition Magic didn't show any partitions other than one big NTSF of 189. GB

[Karnevil9]

Just wanted to check something. My windows XP is actually pre SP1. I have a seperate disk for SP1. Since SP2 came out, is SP1 still necessary? I never install SP1 when I install the system or reinstall the system since I figure that sp2 covers both. I just go right to the SP2 disk. Could this have something to do with my problem or is SP1 incorperated into SP2?

[minsonngo]

Just wanted to check something. My windows XP is actually pre SP1. I have a seperate disk for SP1. Since SP2 came out, is SP1 still necessary? I never install SP1 when I install the system or reinstall the system since I figure that sp2 covers both. I just go right to the SP2 disk. Could this have something to do with my problem or is SP1 incorperated into SP2?


Nope... if you have SP2 then you don't need SP1.

[minsonngo]

When I go into disk management it says in the top screen Windows XP Pro C: Partition basic NTSF healthy system, 49.75 GB , 16 GB free space, 33 % free no fault tolerance 0% overhead.

Then the bottom screen says, Disk 0, windows XP Pro, C: 189.92 GB NTSF, Healthy system.

Side question. What is meant in actions convert to dynamic drive?

SP2 was added after the system install via a disk I made from Microsoft when SP2 was first out.

I didn't make any partitions when I first installed the disk, or later when I did the repair install. But now that my memory is jogged I think I had a failed install of damm small linux some time ago. However Partition Magic didn't show any partitions other than one big NTSF of 189. GB


In disk management... do you see any unallocated disk space or your missing hard drive space anywhere on there? If so that should be the rest of the hard drive space that is missing on the hard drive. All you need to do is partition and format it for use.

[Karnevil9]

No. There is no missing space showing. The top line where it shows volume, layout etc. shows windows XP as having a total of 49 GB of space total. The bottom part showing all disks drives and letters (DVD, DVD R/W etc.) shows windows XP as a hard drive having 189 GB of space. There are no partitions.

[Cricket]

Can you do a screen capture of the Disk Management screen so we can see what you're dealing with?

:) Cricket

[minsonngo]

Yes the screen shot of your disk management screen would be helpful.

In case you don't know how to do it... all you need to do is have disk management on your screen... press the Print Screen key on your keyboard... go into Paint and under the Edit menu... press paste... now save your screen shot and post it on here.

[Cricket]

In case you don't know how to do it... all you need to do is have disk management on your screen... press the Print Screen key on your keyboard... If you hold the Alt key and then press the Print Screen button you'll just capture the active window, not the whole desktop.

:) Cricket

[Karnevil9]

6806

[minsonngo]

I think you have the Capacity Limitation Jumper (CLJ) set up right now which is causing your problem.

See here for how to jumper your HDD. Jumper it to Cable Select and put the drive on the end connector of the IDE cable.

http://www.seagate.com/images/support/en/us/mxo_ata_jumpers.gif



If that isn't it... maybe backing up your data and doing a reformat and a clean install of XP will do the trick.

[Karnevil9]

OK, that jumper in the corner needs to be removed. Unfortunately I have to work tonight. First thing tomorrow morning I'll remove the jumper and post the results.

[minsonngo]

Let us know how it goes. You may need a needle nose plier to help you remove the jumper. Its what I use sometimes. Just make sure you don't bend any of the pins too bad.

[Karnevil9]

Well that wasn't the problem. According to the info on the Maxblast disk. there is nothing that the single pin jumper cover does. Other than mark it as a diamond 9 instead of a diamond 16 which is exactly the same pin configuration but without the pin cover. It is very frustrating.

[minsonngo]

The only thing I can think of now is for you to back up your data... delete all of the partitions and do a repartition and reformat of the HDD and put a clean install of XP on it.

[TwoRails]

Maxtor's like to be jumper as a Master/Slave. Since this is your only drive shown in the Disk Management picture, there should be only one jumper on the drive and should be in the J50 position. Ignore the one pinned jumper. That is the position shown in minsonngo's picture as Master for the various Seagate and Maxtor hard drives. I would not be surprised that even after jumpering it correctly you may still have to reformat it.

[oryx]

I think the failed linux installation must have messed the partition table up.

[Karnevil9]

Yes, I think I most likely will have to reformat it. The jumper has been moved from original position of CS, to Master with no change earlier on when I first noticed the problem. I have since put it back to CS with no results. There are no other jumpers on the drive.

I did notice today that with PM8 the drive is correctly identified as having 189 GB of space but incorrectly shows the same limitation in it's color coding of used space verses free sapce( approx. 16GB). If I select the option to resize free space or create a new partition such as a logical partition it correctly shows the amount of free space, apporox 153 GB. But this is an evaluation version so it won't let me make any changes. (which is a pretty poor evaluation version in my opinion, since how can I evaluate something when it won't let me do anything for real, LOL. )

I'll be pretty busy for the next couple of days so I won't have the time do anything with it until then. As my girlfriend's son said, if you haven't used all the drive space you have and it is not causing problems, why are you worried about it? But as soon as I get a chance to reformat it I'll post the results here. In the meantime if anyone thinks of any other possible problem with it let me know.

Also I am thinking my best bet will be to use the Maxblast disk to zero out the drive before I reformat it to NTFS. Good idea ,bad idea or doesn't matter?

[minsonngo]

Also I am thinking my best bet will be to use the Maxblast disk to zero out the drive before I reformat it to NTFS. Good idea ,bad idea or doesn't matter?


I don't think it would make a difference but... it wouldn't hurt to do so... its utimately your choice.


I would just use the OS installation... delete the old partitions... create a new partition... then format and install the OS.

[kilgoretrout]

I would recommend the zero fill. When I've had too many different OSes writing to the partition table, it was the only way to get things back to normal on some of my hard drives. Different OSes handle partitions in slightly different ways and this occasionally causes problems that can only be solved with a zero fill.
Re partioning tools, there's a nice free bootable cd with a PM clone called gparted:

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

It's linux based and works very well for both windows and linux partitioning tasks. PM has terrible linux support. The best commercial tool if you will be partitioning for both windows and linux is Acronis Disk Director.

[TwoRails]

I would worry more about doing a MBR fix then zeroing out data... Does MaxBlast have a MBR fix utility?

[Karnevil9]

Sorry it took so long to get back here. We use our computer so much it was hard finding a good time to wipe everything without feeling the wrath of my significant other. I did do the fresh install. I saved my important documents and files to a external hard disk then reinstall WinXP. The drive is showing it's full size now. Thanks LeftyAce for the link to slipstreaming the WindowsXP disk and SP2. I had seen instructions for it before but I didn't have the courage to try it. The instructions were easy to follow and it worked find. If I can do it anybody can.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to help me get this fixed.