sukamusiru Posted October 7, 2004 Share Posted October 7, 2004 I just got a new Western Digital hard drive yesterday and I'd like to use it for my main Windows hard drive but the problem is it's 160 GB, shows up as that in HDD utilities from DOS or Windows, but when I go to format and install Windows from boot cd the installer says the hard drive is only 140 GB. I wouldn't care too much except that everything but Windows says the drive is larger. I have a K7N2 Delta2 Platinum motherboard from MSI and I run SP2, if those matter, I thought problems like this were fixed in SP1. What can I do to completely format and install to this drive and get more than 140 GB? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kelsenellenelvian Posted October 7, 2004 Share Posted October 7, 2004 Make more than one partition?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sukamusiru Posted October 7, 2004 Author Share Posted October 7, 2004 Make more than one partition?? Right, I'm trying to move away from my partitions, I have four right now for 2 drives, I want to resetup everything so I don't have to have any. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
insanekiwi Posted October 7, 2004 Share Posted October 7, 2004 that's because a 160gb hd hasnt 160bg of storage. duh. 1mb = 1024kb. besides that windows reserves about 22% of your hd, 10% for the recyclebin and 12% for system restore. reduce thsoe 2 and you'll gain more space. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leesmithg Posted October 7, 2004 Share Posted October 7, 2004 There is a fix for that at M$, seen your problem posted on another forum and answered, if i find it I will post it here. As for reserving space the gross amount is displayed as size of drive, yes of course there are thing windows will use as reserved space, swap, sys restore and recycle bin but size of hard drive should still show up as size without any of the usage and for example, my drive is 28.8 gigs with 10 gigs free currently, but still it should recognise the full size without taking off what it takes away. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sukamusiru Posted October 7, 2004 Author Share Posted October 7, 2004 Yes, I am aware that the actual capacity is different than what it's sold under. About 88% of 160 is 140, so I guess that explains a lot. But Windows reserves this space during selecting the drive or partition to install to and formatting it? How exactly does it work? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sukamusiru Posted October 7, 2004 Author Share Posted October 7, 2004 There is a fix for that at M$, seen your problem posted on another forum and answered, if i find it I will post it here.As for reserving space the gross amount is displayed as size of drive, yes of course there are thing windows will use as reserved space, swap, sys restore and recycle bin but size of hard drive should still show up as size without any of the usage and for example, my drive is 28.8 gigs with 10 gigs free currently, but still it should recognise the full size without taking off what it takes away. Well the 48-bit LBA limitation comes up a lot, but I wouldn't think this was that. For reserving space, I thought the size posting would do as you describe as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
naap51stang Posted October 7, 2004 Share Posted October 7, 2004 My 160 gig drive AFTER FORMATTING shows up as 149gig. This is normal. If you go back to the old days of buying floppy disk, a LOT of them had on the box "2meg" floppy disk, and on the back or somewhere else it stated "formatted capacity 1.44 megabytes" It's been a long known trick that HD manufacturers will show the RAW capacity of a hard drive, not the FORMATTED capacity...... :alien: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leesmithg Posted October 7, 2004 Share Posted October 7, 2004 suka try here at the support section of western digital, a few links that might remedy your situation. http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/ph...type=search_fnl You may need to reconfigure and worse flash a bios upgrade. :no: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sukamusiru Posted October 7, 2004 Author Share Posted October 7, 2004 Alright, I think I know what to do! Before I go try some things, could anyone tell me what the 8MB of unpartitioned space is for that the Windows installer forces? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sukamusiru Posted October 7, 2004 Author Share Posted October 7, 2004 suka try here at the support section of western digital, a few links that might remedy your situation.http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/ph...type=search_fnl You may need to reconfigure and worse flash a bios upgrade. :no: I can use Data Lifeguard Tools to install an overlay then install Windows and choose not to format, however if I do that I don't know if I can leave 8 MB unused, which is what the Windows installer does. So what is that 8 MB? Is it the minimum amount needed for a new partition? What is it, do I need it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MazX_Napalm Posted October 7, 2004 Share Posted October 7, 2004 I recoment that people make a 20 - 40 GB partition for the C: , convert the disk to dynamic, create volumes as needed. BTW you will reclame 7 of those 8 mb (dynamic disks use just 1 mb for disk info) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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