WinXP not recognising all of hard drive space

coopsjc21

coopsjc21

coopsjc21

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Joined
22 Aug 2005
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373
Location
Kent
Hi,
I've just built my new system, it has a Samsung F1 320gb hdd and im using winxp. When I went to install xp (sp1) it only listed the hdd as having about 120gb.. where's the other 200gb gone?? I created 2 partions (one for 110gb and one for 10gb) and hoped that once I'd updated to sp3 the missing 200gb would appear, but no luck!

Do I need to update the bios?
 
It would be nice to include the solution in the follow up post, since google tends to throw up threads and it's frustrating to see someone with the same problem as you, who solved it, but hasn't said how :)
 
Many apologies, how ignorant of me. Yes.. Winxp with no updates does not recognise hard drive over a certain size (about 128gb I think, something to do with not supporting 48-bit logical block addressing) so when you install it fresh you're limited to this amount despite your hard drive being 320gb (or whatever yours is).

Once you've installed XP and updated to a later version (sp1, 2 or 3) right click on "my computer" and go to 'Manage'. Go down to 'Disk management' and there should be the rest of your hard drive space that is greyed out as unpartioned space, here you can right click on it to partion it and get it working as a new drive, or split it up into a few drives.
 
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Ah, got you. I'd heard of this limitation but never experienced it, a side effect of obsessively partitioning everything I imagine.

Thank you for reporting back, especially for providing such detailed instructions :)
 
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