I Didnt Get My Full Hd Capacity... ? Help~!

[punkgamr13 0]

yea... i bought a WD SATA 320 GB HD and... i formatted it and now its only like 127 GB... i have no clue whats wrong... NTFS shouldnt take that much room away.... i also checked with the xp install disk... there are no partitions on that drive either... idk what happened.. i swore it was the 320 before i formatted it... heres the HD...

[gotenx 0]

Are you using windows XP? If you are then it's probably a BIOS problem. A bios update should fix this. If you are running an older version of windows below Win2k Pro, then you have to upgrade to get the full size.

[punkgamr13 0]

ah.. ill try it... thanx.. but will i have to reformat it? (im using xp)

[Inspiron 0]

If this harddrive is your primary drive, you will have a little more trouble with it.

You probably had formatted wrongly. You might not format the entire drive and create the entire drive as 1 partition. So currently, your 320 GB becomes 127 GB. The remaining space is still available. It's just on the unpartitioned area. Follow the steps below.

1) In your Desktop, right-click My Computer
2) Click Manage
3) Select Disk Management under Storage tree
4) You can see your unpartitioned space there. Select that space and partition it.
5) Right-click on the unpartitioned space
6) Click Partition or Format. Create the partition as 1 single partitiion so as to make the entire unpartitioned space for use.
7) After partitioning, you will see an extra drive in My Computer.

Refer to this site for detailed steps :
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17418/windows-7-create-format-hard-disk-partition

Optional
----------
8) If you want to combine the drives together as 1 single 320 GB drive, you will need to use 3rd-party software.
PartitionMagic: https://us.norton.com/ [Windows]
Parted: http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/ [Linux]


Alternatively, you can refer these pages for reference...
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/format_XP.htm
http://helpdesk.umd.edu/
http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org/404.html
http://www.theeldergeek.com/xp_pro_install_-_graphic.htm
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

[magiccode9 0]

hi, you may not have service pack 1 or later installed on your windows. you must have it installed and enabled it on you system to full use the hard drive. click here and here to check the web pages to see if it help. and following the steps as memeber Inspiron said.

- hope this help

[punkgamr13 0]

THANK U!! haha... ive been in there before but i never saw the format option... thats because i had to hit partition then the format is in there... lol but anyway, i got it workin and its formatting right now... now i need to get partition magic.. i have been told about it before so... ill try it... thanx again u guys...ps. it was a secondary hd...