Expert: Chris Morrison Date: 5/29/2008 Subject: Hard Drive Size
Question I am trying to install a Hitachi Deskstar 1,000 gb hard drive into a windows xp system. (Pentium 4 system). Windows is only seeing 127 gb. My bios identifies the drive as 1,000 gb. The Hitachi Feature Tool disk utility also shows the right size. During the windows install process, it only shows one partition and no unused space. I don't mind upgrading to Vista if this will correct the problem. Thanks in advance for any help you can give.
Answer First remember that XP does have some limitations with hard drives. Make sure you have all the windows updates. Service pack 3 is available through windows update so make sure you have that installed.
Upon boot, right click my computer and choose manage. Scroll down to disk management. Once you click on that two windows will appear on the right. Go to the bottom right window. Scroll down till you see the drive in question. It may be grayed out or have a black bar. This means the drive is not set up yet for XP. Simply right click the drive and choose to create partition. Make the partition and format. It should be usefull not (be sure to use NTFS format). If there is already a partition delete it and create a new one.
if you still have probs try maxtors big drive enabler http://www.majorgeeks.com/Maxtors_Big_Drive_Enabler_d4998.html
