Windows only recognizes 127GB of my 500GB HDD

[Sel]

This is an odd problem I've never seen before, but to quickly sum it up, I have a 500GB hard drive, and Windows thinks that it is only 127GB.

The BIOS says its 500.1GB, so I guess that pins the problem on windows.

I googled this and found a few other people who had this problem, but still don't have a solution for it.

I'm running Windows XP Home, and my hard drive is SATA.

Anyone know how to fix this?

[Evil_Monkey]

You need an XP disk with Service Pack 1 I think it was fixed in, if it wasn't service pack 1 then it was definitely service pack 2. I use to have this problem till I got a XP sp2 disk but now I just have Vista so it isn't a problem.

[Sel]

I have XP service pack 2 installed but the problem did not go away. I'm going to try upgrading to SP3 in a bit, see if that helps it out.

[Evil_Monkey]

Did you install it with a service pack 2 disk or did you upgrade it to service pack 1 then 2, because doing it that will will only allow it to read up to 127Gb.
There is a way around it which is by partitioning it but personally I don't like doing that, I would rather have the full drive as one.

[Sel]

I upgraded it from SP1.

So I'm stuck getting a CD with SP2 on it, vista, or ubuntu? :saddowns:

[Evil_Monkey]

Personally I would definitely say go with Vista.

[Amit]

Personally, I would definitely say go with Vista.

I would say disregard that.

You shouldn't be forced to upgrade to a whole new OS just because your current one is depriving you of what is yours in the first place. See if you can copy your shit to an external hardrive and borrow a friend's SP2 disc or do the procedure Monkey described.

Also, if you partitioned the drive to have two parts to fix the problem, can't you just leave 1 gb on the second one and use the rest of the main one? Would that not work?

[Atty]

That happened to me in a more extreme sense, ended up being that the Hard Drive went bad. 320GB drive was reduced to 32GB upon reformat. :(

[Patrickssj6]

That happened to me in a more extreme sense, ended up being that the Hard Drive went bad. 320GB drive was reduced to 32GB upon reformat. :(
Well...there is a jumper setting to limit it to 32GB...or a system formatting type.

[dg]

It's the Logical Block Addressing that Windows XP has. Service Pack 2 should have fixed it, however the BIOS is sometimes the problem.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303013

[supersniper]

Did you try updating to SP3 and see if it helped?

[Sel]

Hello, try this one......
start/control panel/administrative tools/computer managment/storage/disk managment.....if you can see the rest of your disk there....right click/a)formate it, b)make it logical......if i remember right!!!!!!If you can't see your disk there go to BIOS (DEL) and you will find....hd auto detect...if it detects only 130Gb you have a problem!!!if it detects almost 300Gb your ok, and you got your answer....hope to help you...excuse my English.tasosxr 8-)

Worked.