hard drive capacity - not actually 200 gb

[mapunk]

I know when you buy a HD, and it says 200GB, its really going to be something around 180GB, but I just bought a maxtor 200GB HDD and as I'm formatting it right now it says it is 131000 Mb's. Is this normal or did I do something wrong

 

[Law]

What did you format to and what version of windows you using?

 

[Nitestick]

there are several possibilities. we need the info law asked for and the age of the motherboard if possible

 

[Apokalipse]

you need at least XP SP1 to format drives over 137GB.
install SP1, and then go to start, run and run "diskmgmt.msc"
there, you can format the rest of the drive. or if you have your OS on another drive, just delete the partition (making sure you have all the files you want/need) and reformat. just do a quick format though.

 

[Nitestick]

apokalipse knows his stuff better than i. thats pretthy much it in a nutshell

 

[joshd]

why does the 131GB barrier happen?

 

[mapunk]

I just bought a new computer, so everything is brand new (dfi lanparty motherboard). I formatted it using windows 2k professional. Is there still a way I can get it to almost its full 200gb or do i have to format it using xp? I do have another 15GB drive that windows is on it, but I'd like to just use my new 2000 GB drive b/c the speed and cache on my old one is horrible.

OH and it actually is 127 GB, when I was formatting it it said 131000 MB, which is about 127 GB


EDIT: Ok so I read that i need to format the disk when I have SP 3 or 4, but If i just have the windows 2000 pro cd (sp 1 I'm guessing) how do I format it while having SP 3 or 4 since I have to format using the windows cd.

And also, is it good to use partitions? Should i make a 3 or 4GB partition just for windows?

 

[BASSMASTER]

I just bought a new computer, so everything is brand new (dfi lanparty motherboard). I formatted it using windows 2k professional. Is there still a way I can get it to almost its full 200gb or do i have to format it using xp? I do have another 15GB drive that windows is on it, but I'd like to just use my new 2000 GB drive b/c the speed and cache on my old one is horrible.

OH and it actually is 127 GB, when I was formatting it it said 131000 MB, which is about 127 GB


EDIT: Ok so I read that i need to format the disk when I have SP 3 or 4, but If i just have the windows 2000 pro cd (sp 1 I'm guessing) how do I format it while having SP 3 or 4 since I have to format using the windows cd.

And also, is it good to use partitions? Should i make a 3 or 4GB partition just for windows?

Just get service pack 3 or 4, install it, reboot and it will recognize it.

 

[mapunk]

Just get service pack 3 or 4, install it, reboot and it will recognize it.

just did and it didn't recognize it

 

[Law]

There's a problem with FAT32 on XP and 2000 don't quite know why but FAT32 should be able to get around 2 Terabyte but it doesn't. I heard by converting it to NTFS you can get the full capacity. Don't worry you won't lose any data converting to NTFS.

On the other note, drive that are larger then 137GB require that your BIOS support LBA 48bit mode. The BIOS might be your problem you might have to update it.