320G HDD only registering as 127Gig after failed Install

liamg67

Hi can anyone help before I throw my computer out of the window?

Background

My Dell Inspiron is about 12 months old but have had issues with audio whilst using Vista. I do some internet radio and was conscious of the sound glitches that occured during recording. Was advised to revert to XP which I had a copy of from a previous PC.

I thought I was being smart by using a partition on the drive and was to create a dual boot option. However this did not work out and neither ops system worked. Long story short I had to reformat the drive before I could get any op system to run.

The downside is that I now have a drive that was 320G now reporting 127 Gig. I thought this was a partition issue and have got hold of a partition fixer software (CPM Boot) but can create and delete partitions but the C drive will only still report max 127G in Windows (tried XP / Vista and now Win 7) all the same. I can create a secondary partitioned drive which will allow me to create a drive called D with another 100 odd gig. However the difference of about 60 gig is lost somewhere.

Have tried a number of free HDD / partitonen fixers or checkers but none seems to change this.

The question is - how can I fix my drive to have 1 drive called c: reporting true capacity upto the 320gig please?

Drive is WDC WD3200AAKS-75L9A0

Thanks in anticipation.
Liam

Nabber

Is your Bios compatible with WINXP all heads in the HDD might not have been recognised in XP

Have you gone through Control Panel -> Admistrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management ->
Should be able to format and partition from there.

Capacity can't just disappear, you'll find it
If it's a hardware issue its not a good idea to keep the HDD.

Voodu Child

Update XP to Service Pack 1 and then re-run the partition utility.

liamg67

Thnaks both - have tried running Win 7 - but same.
C drive can only max about 127Gig
If I add a partitiiln I can create a secondary drive of about 100 Gig too
It appears there is a bit in the middle of 80 -90 gig which is not being recognised and can not be moved.
I am wondering if this was previosuly an area reserved for the Dell backup folders.

Voodu Child

Im not familiar with CPM Boot, try GParted Live CD.

liamg67

thanks will look it up tonight

liamg67

thanks both got it to work eventually - had to righ click on "my computer" and select "manage" and there was an option to select "storage" and correct partitions etc. This did the trick - but just a further question out of 320G I still only have 298G (which I am greatfull for) but where does the other 20gig go?

Also have the same audio problem which was the issue I was firstly trying to fix. I will post seperately.

Thanks again
Liam

bonzodog2

Your missing 20GB is most likely just down to the disk makers counting GB in a different way to Windows. Although I've had Windows not use ALL the space on a drive before.

Just checked my 320GB external and XP says capacity is 298GB too.

Voodu Child

liamg67 wrote: »

thanks both got it to work eventually - had to righ click on "my computer" and select "manage" and there was an option to select "storage" and correct partitions etc. This did the trick - but just a further question out of 320G I still only have 298G (which I am greatfull for) but where does the other 20gig go?

Also have the same audio problem which was the issue I was firstly trying to fix. I will post seperately.

Thanks again
Liam

298GB is normal for a 320GB drive. The manufacturers define 1kB as 1000 bytes, whereas your OS defines it as 1024. Same for MB, GB etc.

The actual capacity of your drive is the same as any other 320GB drive on the market.

liamg67

thanks make sense - but goes against what i learnt in college all those years ago where 1K did mean 1024 bytes ec