Having been recommended to do so, I have just partitioned my drive into three parts. The first for the OS and the second and third for Media. Having formatted each partition (equally distributed approx 60 GB between each from a 180 GB HDD) I noticed that partition 3 only had around 1 GB of free space out of the 60 GB. I then deleted these two partitions in Windows (XP) and created one partition out of the two (around 120 GB). After formatting, I noticed that I only had just over 60 GB of free space available on this partition. Why is it not accounting for the other potential 60 GB of free space and labelling it used space when it clearly isnt? Have I missed something here?
Do you have Service Pack 1 or 2 installed yet? If not, do so and see if that can rectify the problem.
Yes, I currently have SP2 installed. I've done a scan disk on that partition and have had no changes. Is there anything else I should look at?
Okay...hmm. This is a new one. Get a hold of some drive diagnostic tools from the hard drive manufacturer---if you didn't buy retail or can't find the Floppy/CD with the diagnostic tools that came with the drive.
Common Hard Drive Problems if you’re like most people, you have either already ran out of space on your hard drive, or you are soon to do so. And you’ll probably go out and get a new hard drive, either new or used. The new ones usually come with software that set the drive up for you, by partitioning and formatting it. The used ones usually don’t. That’s where the trouble starts. The most common problem I get from people trying to set up their hard drive is: "My (Larger than 2GB) Drive is only showing 2GB." The problem for that is usually in the Operating System (OS for short). The first version of Windows 95, for example, uses a file system called FAT16. That file system limits the size of the hard drive that is visible to the OS to only 2GB. So when you try to make that larger, it won’t let you. Plain and simple as that. You either must partition your hard drive into several 2GB partitions, or upgrade to an OS that with a file system that will support more than 2GB on a partition. Another reason is because your BIOS has limits. 386 and 486 and lower end Pentium systems have limits of 512MB. Some Pentium Systems are limited to 2GB, and some of the newer ones, are limited to 8GB. It’s all in how the BIOS address the clusters on the Hard drive. It can be corrected with software, that comes with most new drives, like Western Digital’s EZ Drive, and Quantum’s Disk manager just to name a few. They take over where your real BIOS can’t perform, and then addresses the hard drive correctly The next most common problem I get is "My hard drive says it’s 2GB, but Windows is saying it’s 1.86GB. Where’d that 90MB of space go?" Well, that problem is all in the numbers. The makers of the hard drive count 1MB as 1,000,000 Bytes. Windows counts 1MB as 1,048,576 bytes, a difference of 48,576 bytes. That adds up when you are talking 2,000MB. Let’s do the math. Makers of hard drive says there are 2,000,000,000 bytes on the drive, so divide that by 1024 to get the number of kilobytes on the drive. Do that again to get the number of megabytes on the drive. Once more for the number of Gigabytes on the drive. You should get 1.862645149GB, or just 1.86GB, which is what Windows is thinking. That’s where your space went, in the numbers. Another problem I am asked the answer for are a lot of FAT32 ones. "What is FAT32?" "Should I switch to FAT32?" "Can I switch to FAT32 and keep my data on the drive." "What OSs support FAT32." Versions of Windows95 older than OSR2, as well as any DOS version, operate on a file system called FAT16 (or FAT12 in some cases). The existence of large hard drives has led to large partition sizes, which mean large cluster sizes and wasted space. Under FAT16, a smaller cluster size is better, because a small file takes up a whole cluster if there is even one byte in it; the leftover space is called "slack." FAT32 changed that. FDISK in Windows 95 OSR2 or later will only allow you to put FAT32 on drives larger than 512MB. (Unless you use the /fprmt switch when starting FDISK) Inside FDISK, you must enable "large disk support," to choose FAT32. After exiting FDISK and rebooting, FORMAT the drive. NOTE that you must manually reboot after exiting FDISK, this is not automatic as in previous versions of FDISK. If you do not reboot between FDISKing and FORMATing, you will get strange-looking error messages. As always, when you FDISK a drive, you will loose all data. But there are programs out there, like the one that comes with Windows 98, and Partition Magic, that will convert your drive to FAT32 without loosing your data. With that, I hope that somehow, and someway, your Hard drive upgrades, and future problems, will be easily corrected. Source: [link=http://www.pcmech.com/show/troubleshoot/68/] Common Hard drive Problems [/link]
Actually, I doubt it has anything to do with the addressing schematics given that the full amount is recognized. If it were that fact, then you'd run into an issue where you'd only be able to make use of part of the full hard drive's size.
Damn right... it was a quick search, didnt got chance to read the whole thing.. But now I comes up with a good answer... you need several things to be true. First, you need a motherboard BIOS that can handle that size of disk. Check with your PC maker for the capability of their BIOS. Reading the motherboard/PC manual might help, but it has to be a detailed manual, not a "quick-start" manual. If yours does not, and if no update is available, look into a PCI adapter card with its own IDE controllers. Maxtor makes one, but there are plenty of others. Second you need XP SP-1 installed. (Leave this coz I know you have) Third, you need to manually activae 48-bit LBA in XP. See the following MS article: [link=http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;303013] activae 48-bit LBA in XP [/link]
Thanks for the advice! Strangely enough, after much fiddling around in disk management and trial and errors I've managed to solve the problem. I just had to change a parameter of some kind to 64k (?) after selecting the partition size. I dont feel like deleting and reformatting etc to find out what exactly, but all's well now. Thanks again for the help!
If you choose to reformat in the future then let me suggest a partitioning scheme for you: 10GB - For your Windows installation and program files 784MB - For your swap space (Virtual Memory, Paging File). Obviously this size can vary depending on how much RAM you have installed. As a general rule, the swap size should be double the amount of RAM installed 169GB - For personal files, music, videos....
i've always set my swapfile to 2.5 times the size or my RAM, not that i can remember why, but should i now set it at double instead of 2.5 times ?
