New Hard Drive shows smaller size than actual

Nacho

New Member
I replaced my main Hard Drive for a WD3200AAJB 320 Gb but after loading XP it says actual capacity is only 130 Gb. If I go to BIOS then it says size is 320 Gb. I go to disk management on XP and I dont have an option for expanding the size. I also installed Partition Magic and dont seem to be able to expand the size of the partition. It is NTFS formated. Any suggestions? Thanks!
 
Did you use a pre-SP2 disc? If so, it's a file limitation that occurred with XP SP1 an before.

To get the entire drive space, download a PartedMagic ISO, burn it to a CD, and boot to it. Then use GParted to extend the partition.
 
Thanks voyagerfan99, I will attempt to obtain a partition magic ISO and do that. Probably my XP is SP1, not sure, but the original disk is from 2002. Thanks.
 
Thanks voyagerfan99, I will attempt to obtain a partition magic ISO and do that. Probably my XP is SP1, not sure, but the original disk is from 2002. Thanks.

Yup that would be why.

I recommend slipstreaming the newest service packs to prevent this issue in future. It will also save you hours of updates.

Guide to slipstreaming service packs onto your install CD: http://winsupersite.com/windows-xp/slipstreaming-windows-xp-service-pack-3-sp3

You can download SP2 here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=28

You can download SP3 here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=24
 
Voyagerfan99: I tried last night the fix with Gparted. I was able to extend the partition from 130 Gb to 302Gb but after restarting I got a Blue Screen stating something was wrong with my hardware. I went back to Gparted and formatted the drive and then XP again showed only 130Gb. I have been gifted today an XP Pro with SP2. I will try installing this tonight and see how it goes. Thanks. Nacho.
 
I used to run into this problem when using Windows XP. I would get the Blue Screen of Death after modifying the Active Partition (the part of the hard drive the operating system loads from).

You may re-install Windows XP again and find you are running into the same problem. I upgraded to Windows 7 and have not since had the problem.
 
If you don't want to reinstall OS (for various reasons),then slipstream SP3 and burn it to blank CD-ROM disk and then use that disk to perform the repair of XP and it should work.On that way you will not delete/change any data and settings and anything else.

Anyway XP with SP1 works perfectly fine on large drives.I have original XP SP1 disk and I used it without any problems on drives all the way up to 2 TB in size.Never tried it on 3 TB drives simply because I never had a drive of 3 TB :D
 
Back
Top