Hi, Recently got a virus on my computer so decided formatting and starting fresh would be the best option. I have a 160gb Maxtor harddrive. A few months ago using Maxblast i had a problem where the harddrive would show as 163gb in the Maxblast software but then after partitioning it as NTFS 163gb it would still show in the bios as 32gb. I managed to get round this problem by using Fdisk i believe but it was that long ago i cant really remember what i did. When i got my recent problem the first thing i did is use maxblast to format and repartition the drive not remembering what happened last time. And as before now in the bios and after reinstalling windows my 160gb drive is showing as 32gb again. I have updated the bios to the latest version had no joy. Messed about with Fdisk to no effect. Tried partitioning software like Acronis and Partition Magic. Everything i do the drive still reports as 32gb. Motherboard is an Asus P5P800-SE. Anyone any idea's how i can sort this problem as it's driving me mad. Been on 3 days messing about with partition software trying to sort it. Any help would be much appreciated. It's not the jumpers either as some people have told me elsewhere. Thanks.
weird, a 160 Gb drive should have about 149Gb free space after formatting[ot]quite a lot of space is lost after formatting, the 'dead' space is also taken up by error checking stuff[/ot] that is correct, as maxblast will probably be looking at the unformatted space, did you low level format the drive ? that would have being my fist thought to, as most HDD's have a jummper to restrict the drives to 32Gb[ot]unusual, will seach net for a possible solution[/ot]
How you can get stuck at 32gb after formatting as ntfs and then sort the problem using fdisk I dont know!! Also fdisk wont have any effect on how it shows in BIOS. As long as your BIOS supports 48bit LBA (which it will if you have had it recognise your drive as more than 137gb) it should always show as 160gb. I agree If the BIOS sees it as 32gb it must be a jumper problem... fdisk uses fat which when you use with windows 2000/xp will be limited to 32gb. You have to use ntfs to format a partition bigger than 32gb with windows xp/2000. All I can say is format using ntfs. You might hit a limit around 128gb... if you do install service pack 2 for xp or service pack 3 for windows 2000. If you still have a problem add this DWORD key to the registry then set the value to 1 using hexadecimal base. HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Atapi\Param eters\EnableBigLba Restart and it should show the rest of your drive. [OT] Donkey, you cant low level format drives nowadays... its physically impossible. If a tool says low level format it will either be a zero fill or a format like ms formats... ie a surface scan too. [/OT]
Tried the above and edited the registry. Still showing as 32gb. On the verge of just conceding and buying another hard drive.
Took a picture from my bios showing what it's saying No matter what i do i cant get it back to 160gb. Jumper changes, partition utilities, bios flashing, registry editing, nothing i try will get it to go back. Wish i never touched maxblaster now
Have you read the maxtor support pages? Im sure I remember it saying that if you format the drive with the 32gb jumper on it will always stay as 32gb until you format it without the jumper.
