I have a problem with a drive that I am trying to install. The drive is a Western Digital Caviar Black 1.0TB drive. The first issue that I am having is that I didn't have time to install it before work on Friday, and I let my brother install the drive for me.:doh: He said that when the he was installing Windows XP, the drive only came up as a 32MB drive, and that is what he set the partition for. So here is the real problem. He thought he could fix it later, but now Windows only recognizes the drive as a 32MB drive. I know Windows can recognize it as a 1.0TB drive. I formatted the drive the night before using disk management, and it recognized it as having over 900GB. Is there anything I can do to fix this problem?
Sounds like your brother made an error under disk management you should see the unused space which you can use to create a new partition else you can format the drive again. (right clicked on the unused space and click create partition)
Welcome to HWF Make sure that you're formatting the partition as NTFS. If the solution of Sniper doesn't work either, then try to create 2 500GB partitions.
Update on progress: I fixed the error my brother made. Turns out the one thing that I asked him to do before installing the drive - making sure that the motherboard was configured for large drives - was skipped. I updated the BIOS, and re-formatted the drive. Windows now can see the drive as a 1TB drive. I have also gone through the initial install process for Windows (basically the part that comes from booting from the install disc). Now the problem that I am running into is that I can't boot to the drive. I have removed the old drive from the system, and tried the new drive on all four SATA ports. I can get the old drive to work on all four SATA ports with no problems. Help???
First of all, make sure that the hard disk gets loaded just after the CD drive (in the BIOS, Boot Priority Settings). If that doesn't work, try the following: Boot from the Windows installation disc. At a certain point you can choose between 3 options: - ENTER to load Windows Setup - R to load the Recovery console - F3 to exit setup Press 'R' to load the recovery console. If you're asked to choose the corresponding installation and password, do so (don't think that it's gonna ask that). Then enter the following commands (press ENTER at every line): Code: fixmbr fixboot Answer Yes (Y) at every question. Then enter exit to reboot the computer.
Funny thing is, the install disc goes straight to the Windows install. I decided to wipe the drive one more time, and see if there was a way I could get to the recovery console after formatting.
Okay I am getting a little confused. The windows install is complete, and it appears that I can boot to the new drive. Thanks for all of the help!
