Only 128 gigs of 200 gig hard drive recognized

Question

I have a new Dimension E521 running Media Center Edition. I brought over my two Maxtor 6 L200P0 IDE hard drives (200 gigs each) and am using them in the E521 via a Promise Ultra IDE controller. Both drives are recognized on the controller just fine. The first drive correctly shows up as a 200 gig (ok, 189.92 GB) drive in disk management. The second drive, however, is showing up only as a 128 GB drive. I have half of the drive partitioned as a 100-gig partition and the other free 100 gigs unallocated, but in the E521 I cannot allocate more than 33 GB. I can access data from the allocated partition with no problems. I don't think this is a problem with LBA or other such issues since the first drive is showing up fine. I'm having a hard time figuring out why one drive would register correctly but the other would not. Any suggestions? Thanks.

ejn63 · Answer

Given the brand, I would test both drives with PowerMax - it would not be out of the question that one of them is failing.

PBS_in_Napervil · Answer

That seems to be a very odd failure mode. The drive checks out fine, no errors. Does anyone else have any ideas?

KRHJr · Answer

I am having this same problem on my Dimension 4550. I recently reformatted a 200gb hd and when I installed Windows XP it would only show a maximum partition size of 128gb. When I look at the drive the disk management screen in Windows shows 58gb unallocated. Installed a secondary 320gb drive and I get the same result- 128gb healthy with 170gb unallocated. I've had the latest BIOS (A08) on this computer and I've reformatted many times without this problem. Could something be wrong with the motherboard - I've also had problems with the USB ports (which led me to my most recent XP reinstall try)? Any ideas?

shesagordie · Answer

Ken Holmes

Are you using XP SP1 or XP SP2 or XP with a SP1 or SP2 upgrade?

Bev.

===================================================
Please don't send me questions about your system by DCF Messenger.
Post the issue in the appropriate Board, where they will be answered.

KRHJr · Answer

I reinstalled with XP SP2 disc. This is weird because I've done many reinstalls before and it has always recognized the HD size before I've reformatted and created a new partition. In my Disk Management I've been able to format this 58 gb of unallocatted space but now I have 2 partitions and I don't want that.

Storage, Drives & Media

Was this post helpful?