I searched & know why theres a 127gb limit, but how do I fix it?

[Halenstone]

I've searched the forum, and maybe I'm asking it the wrong way, but I have a 160gb HD that windows is only reading as a 127gb. My problem is that removed my original 40gig HD and Replaced it with this one then installed a fresh copy of XP professional. I installed XP on the D: drive (a 5gig partition, but for some reason everytime I want to install a program, windows want to use the D: drive as the default instead of the C: drive which has all the room..but that's another problem). I was wondering, if I partition the C: drive using something like Partition Magic, will this free up the extra space that's not visible? Or is there a way to do it in windows XP.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, even if it's just a point in the right direction!

Thanks.

oh, and if you could also point towards a place that will tell me how to change the default drive where programs install this would be great....I recently, accidentaly installed a couple of games on my D: drive and was left with almost no space untill I deleted them (after having played about 45% of the way through)!

 

[jseber1982]

I have had a similar problem befor. I tried partition magic and yes it works. The extra room will be on the outside of the platter, So if you wanna make the c: bigger, you will have to first move the d:\ slider over to take of the remaining 34gigs. then go to the beginning of d:\ and move that slider to the right to make it smaller, then you will have a gap between the 2 drives. Then slide c:\ over to close the gap. Then you will reboot and it will do it on boot, then presto

 

[Halenstone]

Thanks Jseber, I think i'm gonna pick up a copy of Partition Magic this weekend and give your solution a try.

 

[jseber1982]

Naw dont go buy it...... use bearshare or something like that and download a **TRIAL** copy or somethin lol

 

[Blueman]

What version of windows are you using? if it doesn't include sp1 then you won't see over 137 gig. Otherwise is the bios of the MTB seeing the drive correctly? you might need a bios update.

As for the installation question, when installing XP for the first time, only connect the primary OS drive and make just one partition to start with, then make the other partitions or add the extra HDDs. this way you insure windows only writes system files to one drive/partition when loading.

also make sure the primary HDD is plugged into the primary ide port as master perferably, or that you have the bios set to boot from the primary drive before any other HDDs.