romur about hard drive capacity

[gohand]

well, i just seen something i felt very weird, people always complain that the hard drive came in and was written to be 80gb 160gb etc but when formated, and installed windows there is always appear to be a few gbs or even a few ten gbs less, but it is supposed to be normal, but why? and the weirest thing is that my friend had a dell media pc, when it came in, the hard drive was about 180gb, and after they got formated and reinstalled win xp it became 127gb, when i had experience with a seagate 160gb hard drive, formated got the same result--127gb, so i suspect that his dell pc is using the same hd, but how can u explain when the first time it came in got as big as 180gb?? if what i suspect is correct is there a way to format a 160gb hard drive in to a closely 180gb hard drive?? can someone explain this to me?

 

[TheMajor]

You have to install SP1a or edit your registry to use more than 127GB's. You have to enable LBA 48 bit mode.

 

[gohand]

can u be more specific? how can i change in the registry, in fact the windows is updated to as sp2 but still 127, is it the maximum capasity for that is 127gb? if so howcome a friend of mine had a wd hd same 160gb same setup but had 149gb? is there a way to make it's size become normal before formating the hd? And in fact when it format it already detected as that least gbs well it not formating the entire drive? thx for your help a lot!

 

[Apokalipse]

http://www.techist.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=72690
make an XP disk with SP2 (or at least SP1a)
this is legal as long as you have an original copy of XP

then if you need to reformat again, you will be able to get the full capacity from that CD

 

[TheMajor]

If the size is limited to 127GB you need SP1a or SP2. I don't know how to enable it in your registry, but you can use X-Setup to enable LBA 48bit support. Use at own risk and backup first: http://www.x-setup.net/

If it shows 149GB instead of 160GB it is normal, cause HDD manufacturers use 1GB=1000MB and Windows uses 1GB=1024MB.

 

[gohand]

but howcome some friend had his sp2 installed and still had 127 and the other also had it installed(but using wd, different hd) had 149gb?

 

[Hefemeister]

Some hard drives require a bios update as well and some require you to run a patch.