Yet another HD problem

[Dystopia]

Hi, my brother has a 160GB HD. Here's the problem: it only shows up as 127GB. Any thoughts on what the problem ans solution is?
Also if it helps, he had to re-format it several times, and Windows won't install XP anymore.

Thanks

 

[simpletron]

first you must realize you will lose some "space" because your Hard drive has 160 billion bytes but in binary a gigabyte is 2^30 or 1,073,741,824 bytes. So your hard should show ~149 GB in windows.

the reason why you have only 127 GB or 137,438,953,472 bytes is because in the orginal XP, that was the max for a single drive. they fixed it in SP1. here is the knowledge base info on this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303013

as for windows not installing, I don't have a clue.

 

[Dystopia]

thanks a lot, so then when he installs SP3, it should show 149GB. Anyone else know why windows won't install? Could trying it with SP3 help? thanks!

 

[johnb35]

If you have reformatted lots of times, there is a high possibility that some of the hard drive is tagged bad sectors and won't be useable.

 

[Dystopia]

ok thanks a lot, i will tell him. any way to fix these "bad sectors? because he can still install other stuff on it, just no xp.

thanks