Computer says hard drive is smaller than it is?

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deuce145

New Member
I bought a Seagate 500GB drive, and installed windows on it.
I go to my computer, click Properties on my hard drive and it says total capactiy is 128GB. Can someone please tell me how to fix this?

Thanks.
 
i guess theres something where you must press when formatting the drive, otherwise it only acts as 128gb at max, so my guess is to reformat the drive and try to see if it prompts you for something, but for all i know is only a rumor, the drive should show like 490-something in terms of after its formatted
 
What format is it???
What configuration is it??? (IDE or SATA)
Did you do a full format on the hard drive???? i say you have only done a format of 128GB.

Go into computer management and do a full format of the drive under this utility.
 
The drive is SATA, NTFS, and when I open up the formatting options, 128GB is all it gives me. I can change the allocation size though. By default it's set to 4096 bytes. I can change it to 2048, 1024, or 512.
 
What version of Windows did you install? If XP pre-SP1, you will not see the entire Drive. Have you applied all the Windows Updates?
 
Its probable a pre SP XP cd. One way would be to slipstream SP2 or 3 to it, then you would not have to fool with it anymore and reinstall. If you dont want to reinstall, download and install SP 2 or 3. Go into disk managent and partition and format the rest of the drive. If you dont want 2 partitions merge the 2 into 1. But I would still slipstream SP 2 or 3 onto your XP cd that way when you do reinstall it will partition the whole drive.
 
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Thanks guys, that was the problem, I was running XP Pro SP0. I'm gonna download and install home SP3, hopefully that will fix it.

Thanks for the help again.
 
You need to have a copy of Windows with at least sp1 on it to format pass the 128gb.
Downloading the sp after the fact is not going to change it. The drive is already formatted for 128gb.
 
How do u slipstream sp3 on to an existing disk, I never could figure that out. Maybe some simplified instructions here might help him and me out.
 
after you update the rest should be shown as unallocated under
administrative tools--->computer management-->disk management
 
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