Hi, I just built a new pc.

It has a 250Gb SATA hard drive, but it's only showing up as 120Gb.

Can anyone help?

Thanks,

John

What OS do you have ?

First go into your bios (press del to enter setup when your pc is starting up). See if the hard drive is detected correctly there. If it comes up as the right size then the problem is with windows. If it comes up as the wrong size update your bios by going to the motherboard manufacturers website.
If the problem is with windows firstly make sure you have windows updated, SP2 and all that (assuming you have xp). Then go to the hard drive manufacturers website and there should be a downloadable utility on there that allows windows to detect large hard disks (called big drive enabler or some such...)



You may need to purchase Partition Magic or Vcom Partition Commander(external program) to get use of the 250gb. When win XP formats a hard drive it sets aside a small portion for boot. Also if you don't tell winXP to format it all it won't.


You need to know what Manufacture made the hard drive. You can try and go to the hard drives website and see if they have a small hard drive program that will automatically setup your hard drive for you to run on your system. Most of the hard drive companies have a program for this. Also check to make sure your System Bios is up to date. Many system Bios are not up to date, by the time you get the new pc up and running an update is already out. Hopefully your system is new enough to run large hard drives. If you submit more info as to the name of your hard drive, with model,the name of your PC (compaq 4300, IBM , ect.)name and model I can get you the info you need.

Windows XP - Operating System - 127 GB - 137 GB Limitation
Windows XP - Operating System - 127 GB - 137 GB Limitation


Before performing any troubleshooting with large capacity drives in Windows XP, confirm that you have Service Pack 1 or higher. Without this service pack it is unsafe to operate a large capacity ATA drive in Windows XP.

To determine if Windows XP is at Service pack 1 or higher follow these steps:

Click on the Start button.
Click on Control Panel.
Click on Performance and Maintenance.
Click the System icon.
View the 4th line down to determine your service pack level. Click here for an example screen shot.
If it does not say "Service Pack 1" or greater, an upgrade is required to support drives larger than 137GB.

After Verifying Service Pack 1 or greater is Installed
You now have several options in order to recover the remaining space on the drive.

If the new drive is the boot drive:

Restart the installation with the appropriately patched operating system.
You may use a 3rd party "partition stretch utility."
You may also create a 2nd partition on the boot drive with Windows Disk Management, to have more than one partition on the drive.
If the new drive is the non-boot drive:

You may use Windows Disk Management to create additional partitions.
You may erase the original partition and create an additional one. Be sure to backup all critical data before proceeding.






Capacity Issues

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?loca...000dd04090aRCRD

Some more info:
http://seagate.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/seagat...amp;p_topview=1

http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/capacity/index.html
http://www.48bitlba.com/
http://www.48bitlba.com/issues.htm
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...b;EN-US;q314463

The problem come up alot when you have winXP and just use that disk to format and reinstall the OS..is that how you did it?

see here

PATA Troubleshooter - Computer Hardware Detection Issue - Check BIOS Setup


http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?loca...000dd04090aRCRD

If you are installing a second hard drive that is 250G the see this

How to install an additional hard drive using Windows XP Disk Management.

http://seagate.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/seagat...nZT0x&p_li=

http://www.computeractive.co.uk/partitionmanager/index

You can still get Paragon Partition Manager 8.5 for free from here.

Note you will need to register the program to acquire a free serial number.

http://www.computeractive.co.uk/hdmanager8/index

If you have any problems with V8.5 V8 is still available from here.

There is also Swiss Knife which is also free although not as versatile as Paragon.

Hi friend,
If your PC has already one harddrive before attatching another harddrive then the jumper setting is not correct that's why it shows the older harddrive capacity,so just check it