Disc format problem on new PC build.

[wiretech]

I am building a new desktop PC. I have installed two 1 TB hard drives. All of the hardware seems to be in place however when I loaded Windows XP pro and I go to My Computer it says that Drive E has a total size of 1.95 GB and Drive C has a total size of 931 GB. When I installed XP all of the files were installed on Drive E, now I can't format Drive E.
Question: How can I reformat Drive E then reinstall XP onto that drive such that Drive E will show 1 TB's ? When I go into setup it shows two hard drives each having a size of 1TB. I really don't care which drive I install XP, but I want both drives at 1TB. The other drive I will use as a dump / storage drive. Please help.
Hardware: Intel Quad Q9650 processor and Gigabyte EP45-UD3P motherboard. 4GB of memory.

[wiretech]

I installed two 1TB hard drives. I then installed Win XP Pro 64 bit. Somehow I installed XP on drive E and somehow drive E only shows 1.95GB!!! How can I either delete this partition and format drive E. I went into Computer Management then Storage. When the drives appeared I tried to delete the partition for E but the "delete partition" box was not highlighted!!! I tried doing it from the command prompt and did not have any success. Now I have three drive letters with the storage, as follows:
E: 1.95GB
C: 931.5GB, and
F: 929.56GB

How can I reformat the two drives to show 1TB of space?
When I install XP how can I choose the drive to install to?

Please help.

[Spools]

If you've only installed Windows at this point and don't have any other programs or data loaded, I'd suggest reinstalling. However, before reinstalling disconnect the second drive. This should eliminate any confusion about which drive has Windows installed. During install, delete and format all partitions.

[wiretech]

Originally Posted by Spools If you've only installed Windows at this point and don't have any other programs or data loaded, I'd suggest reinstalling. However, before reinstalling disconnect the second drive. This should eliminate any confusion about which drive has Windows installed. During install, delete and format all partitions.

I did what you said and it worked. But now I still have Win XP installed on a partition. The partition is: E and is 1.95GB. I can't delete it. How can I format the hard drive and get 1TB of storage? Once this is done I will reinstall Win XP.

[Spools]

Do you have a card reader installed by any chance? If so, disconnect it from the motherboard prior to installing the OS. In fact, make sure the only drives connected are the optical with the XP install disc and the hard drive where you're loading XP.
You should be given an option during installation to delete and format any existing partitions on the hard drive. You're also given the option to allocated space to a partition. Choose the option that assigns the entire drive to one partition.

[systempat]

I don't think you have a hardware problem at all. The size advertised on the retail for ALL disc drives does not equal the size you see in the properties after it has been formatted. One problem is just translating binary math to decimal numbers. They advertise 100 MB for a hard-drive they mean exactly 100 million mega-bytes. But on the computer everything is in binary powers of 2. So the number is 1024 * 1024 or 1,048,576 bytes in a 'megabyte' . So the 100 MB they advertise becomes 95.3 MB displayed on the properties. Similar for gigabytes.
Also the drive is formatted so the OS can use it. Almost all drives come preformatted which is fine. The Formatting uses some of the disk space. That is normal.
If you check the properties for each drive for capacity it probably is the same and is something like the 931 gb number that you gave. If so you have not "lost" anything.
It would be nice if they advertised the formatted capacity of the drives but they like to use the bigger numbers. Just like they still use the diagonal measure of the screen size of the TVs and monitors ( one of my pet peeves ).

[glc]

Zero fill both drives, then DISCONNECT one of them. Reinstall XP (making sure your XP CD has at LEAST SP1 on it) before connecting the second drive. Make SURE you are using NTFS.

[glc]

Threads merged - please do not crosspost.

[systempat]

I missed the issue. You had that extra partition on the 2nd drive. It has both E and F. Follow the instructions by GLC and Spools. I would assume that the 2nd step after installing XP Pro on the 1st drive would be to then get the 2nd drive connected and then go to disk management and make sure the 2nd drive has only 1 partition. Delete and create NTFS partitions as needed to get to 1 partition for the 2nd disk. Your OS will then be installed on the C: drive and the other drive will probably be E: