Yes, I do have sp1a on the machine. It just keep showing 127 total gb in windows. Checked Bios and hard disk says capacity is 250 GB. Checked the atapi.sys file and it is up to current version. Drawing a blank here. Dell loaded this system with a 200 GB hard drive. Now they send me this 250 GB hard drive after the origial 200 went bye bye, so now I'm lost.
Just an update...after going in FDISK and setting up and formatting primary partition, I then went to install windows once again and it did show the drive as 232 GB available (249,999,126,528 bytes). So I formated and installed xp professional. After putting on sp1a again, now it shows in windows:
Total Size - 232 GB Free Space - 123 GB Used Space - 109 GB
I have no idea why this is like this. There is nothing on this CPU but windows. What is up with this hard drive?
dageezerus, oh I agree with you and already knew that. The problem is is is only showing 123 GB of FREE SPACE. I just installed windows and all the updates. That is all that is on the cpu. It should show a lot more than that.
Total Size - 232 GB Free Space - 123 GB Used Space - 109 GB
How is this possible and is there anything I can do to correct this?
did you try a driver update for the hd? anyways with a hdd this big you should consider multiple partitons anyways. make a few partitions and see if you can get all your hdd space.
Dan, yes the hard drive is updated and I ran Western Digitals
Data Lifeguard Tools V. 11.0 and it shows the drive as the correct 250 gb (232 gb really). It is just in windows that is showing that I have 108 gb of space used. Very odd. I may try to run FDISK once again and format the drive and see if that works. I have no idea why this is happening. Everything I have read on the net I have done and it still shows half the drive as used.
Ok after trying once again, I tried quick format off the windows disk after I created the primary partition in FDISK. Once I got in windows, all was good. It was showing the 232 GB total size and 230 gb available.
Now, the only difference between quick format and full is that full format "identifies and tracks bad sectors so that they are not used for storing data. Choose this method for any disk that has bad sectors or has a history of file-corruption problems that might be related to bad sectors."
If full format is only using good sectors and quick is using the entire drive, this makes me worry if Dell sent me a bum HD. They are sending me a new one just in case, but my question is SHOULD I WORRY about this drive? Is it for sure bad?
DELL-Donald K
2 Intern
•
4K Posts
0
March 10th, 2004 05:00
Do you have WINXP w SP1a??
Also, here is a good site for +200 GB drives.
http://www.shortfamilyonline.com/tech/windows/windows-big-hard-drives.php
illini19
35 Posts
0
March 10th, 2004 06:00
Yes, I do have sp1a on the machine. It just keep showing 127 total gb in windows. Checked Bios and hard disk says capacity is 250 GB. Checked the atapi.sys file and it is up to current version. Drawing a blank here. Dell loaded this system with a 200 GB hard drive. Now they send me this 250 GB hard drive after the origial 200 went bye bye, so now I'm lost.
Hard drive is WD2500
HELP! :(
illini19
35 Posts
0
March 10th, 2004 18:00
Just an update...after going in FDISK and setting up and formatting primary partition, I then went to install windows once again and it did show the drive as 232 GB available (249,999,126,528 bytes). So I formated and installed xp professional. After putting on sp1a again, now it shows in windows:
Total Size - 232 GB
Free Space - 123 GB
Used Space - 109 GB
I have no idea why this is like this. There is nothing on this CPU but windows. What is up with this hard drive?
Any help?
Message Edited by illini19 on 03-10-2004 02:20 PM
Message Edited by illini19 on 03-10-2004 02:21 PM
DELL-Donald K
2 Intern
•
4K Posts
0
March 10th, 2004 19:00
That is the correct information. it is the difference between how the operating system defines a Gigabyte & how marketing defines a Gigabyte:
Marketing: 1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes 249,999,126,528 = 250 GB
Windows: 1GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes 249,999,126,528 = 232.829 GB
So the drive is functioning normally & displaying the correct data
illini19
35 Posts
0
March 10th, 2004 20:00
dageezerus, oh I agree with you and already knew that. The problem is is is only showing 123 GB of FREE SPACE. I just installed windows and all the updates. That is all that is on the cpu. It should show a lot more than that.
Total Size - 232 GB
Free Space - 123 GB
Used Space - 109 GB
How is this possible and is there anything I can do to correct this?
dan39
1.2K Posts
0
March 10th, 2004 22:00
illini19
35 Posts
0
March 10th, 2004 23:00
illini19
35 Posts
0
March 11th, 2004 01:00
Ok after trying once again, I tried quick format off the windows disk after I created the primary partition in FDISK. Once I got in windows, all was good. It was showing the 232 GB total size and 230 gb available.
Now, the only difference between quick format and full is that full format "identifies and tracks bad sectors so that they are not used for storing data. Choose this method for any disk that has bad sectors or has a history of file-corruption problems that might be related to bad sectors."
If full format is only using good sectors and quick is using the entire drive, this makes me worry if Dell sent me a bum HD. They are sending me a new one just in case, but my question is SHOULD I WORRY about this drive? Is it for sure bad?
Thanks