300gb Hard drive is limited to just 31.4gb i have an old pc but have installed xp on it?

Question

I Only use this drive as storage for games..music etc.. is there any way i can get the full capacity from it. It is a Seagate 300gb Drive. I would be thankfull for any help

it is ntfs not fat32 and the computer does only ever read it as 31.4g. can i get updates for the motherbord online

Answer 1

If it is only accessing 31.4 gbs there definately something wrong. First check the Disk Manager to see if it can read the entire drive, to get there right click My computer and click the manage button. A window will pop up and one of the options on the left side will say "Disk Management" Click that and in the right box a screen will appear showing all your drives, see if your 300gb drive is registered as having 300gb or only the 31. To check this look at the bar next to the drive, if most of the bar is black and a small portion is green it just means that you did not partition and format the rest of the drive, right click the black area and click the Create Partition option. If it still only registers 31.4 gbs the drive could be corrupt or your chipset drivers do not support that hard drive. Also make sure that the 300 gb drive is formatted using NTFS and not FAT32. You are saying it's an older computer and that you installed XP on it. Check your Drivers for your Chipset by right clicking my computer, and clicking manage again. This time click the Device Manager option on the left. Scroll down to the System Devices and expand it by clicking the little + sign next to it. There you will see alot of drivers coming out of it. Look to see if the drivers for your pci bridge, processor to I/O, etc drivers have a long number in the driver name like "intel 96404384590 pci bridge" if it does not have those numbers in it than it is a generic driver that Windows has loaded because it does not have the correct driver, and you will need to find the driver for your motherboard to get full capabilities on your computer, including all the space in your hard drive. Hope this helps you.

Answer 2

It sounds like your on-board IDE interface is quite old and does not support drives over that size.

You will need an add-on IDE adapter; normally this will be a PCI card. You can then connect the cable to this and access newer hard drives.

Another option is to get a USB drive enclosure and keep the drive external, that way it will be easier to connect the drive to your other PC or a laptop if needed.

btw, a lot of the answers above are incorrect, I have a drive formatted to fat32 (for mac compatibility) that is 120GB in size so that isn't the problem. Also I know from first hand experience building PC's that older IDE interfaces had limits.

You should also make sure if you changed jumper settings that you didn't enable the 31GB limit setting that a lot of drives have for compatibility with such BIOS's.

Answer 3

the older bios can only ready 30GB. if the motherboard manufacturer doesn't have a bios update then there's not much you can do. There are software utilities that can interface for you and allow you to use the full 300 but I never trust them because they use a software mapping system and if anything happens with the bootup software you will probably lose all of your data.

So .... best thing is to either use just the 30GB until you can get a new PC or exchange the 300 for a 30.

Answer 4

You won't be able to increase the size of your C:/ drive to the full amount without reformatting your hard drive and reinstalling windows.

But you should be able to make a new partition with the rest of the hard drive. Just make sure you format it using NTFS, rather than FAT32.

If you right-click on "my computer" and go to manage, then select disk management, you should be able to select the unpartitioned space on your hard drive and format a new partition - it will get a new drive letter and will appear in "my computer" as if it was a separate hard drive.

Answer 5

nicely, xp runs on NT document equipment, the place as win98 run on fat 32 document equipment, this is the main significant reason u won't be able to the stress, you're able to format the hdd first yet chk out equipment standards first. right this is what you ought to use homestead windows XP expert • laptop with 3 hundred megahertz or bigger processor clock velocity counseled; 233 MHz minimum required (unmarried or twin processor equipment);* Intel Pentium/Celeron kinfolk, or AMD K6/Athlon/Duron kinfolk, or well suited processor counseled • 128 megabytes (MB) of RAM or bigger counseled (sixty 4 MB minimum supported; could decrease overall performance and a few constructive properties) • a million.5 gigabytes (GB) of obtainable perplexing disk area* • great VGA (800 x 600) or bigger-selection video adapter and visual reveal unit • CD-ROM or DVD stress • Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or well suited pointing device if u have been given each physique of those thn good success

Answer 6

32GB is a FAT32 file limit.

If you want the full 300GB as one partition then you should format it with the NTFS file system.

Nothing wrong with your drive or bios, just the file system on the drive. NTFS is far superior to FAT32 anyway so just use that.

If you like my answer, consider voting for it!

J

Answer 7

The only reason I can imagine is that you've set your jumpers incorrectly. If so you just have an a restriction on the HDD size as far as I remember it can't be above 32G

Answer 8

You will either have to set the jumpers, or buy an ACI controller card

Answer 9

Your BIOS probably cant handle that.. See if there is an upgrade.