Windows isn't allowing me the maximum capacity of my hard drive!

[marcelgraf]

I have a home-built PC with Win XP.  I just installed a new 500g HD to replace an older 160g.  The old hard drive was causing problems and it got to the point where Windows wasn't starting up, so I ended up cloning the old hard drive onto the new one.  Now I'm working off the new hard drive but for whatever reason Windows thinks it's 160g and won't allow me to exceed that.  How should I go about fixing this?  Thanks

[Broni]

Do you have Service Pack 1 installed? Without it, XP won't see beyond 137GB.

[homer]

Do you have Service Pack 1 installed? Without it, XP won't see beyond 137GB.

you beat me to it Broni.

[Broni]

You know...once it goes this way, another time, the other way...LOL

[marcelgraf]

Yeah its sp2.  Any other ideas?

[squall_01]

Probably since you cloned your old drive and put it on the new one its only seeing that partition.  If you have another PC and a network try moving the files to it or get a HD Enclosure and have the drive that you want to use in your PC an connect the one you want to move the files off of to it.  This is only a theory, but you can try doing it.

[Broni]

Probably since you cloned your old drive and put it on the new one its only seeing that partition.

Nice...

[BC_Programmer]

If your lucky you might be able to use disk management to see the full size that your BIOS is reporting to windows:

Start->Run, Diskmgmt.msc

once that starts, peruse the graphs it displays at the bottom. Look for sections labelled "Unallocated space". If you find one of 340GB (around) you might be lucky and able to make a new partition in that space to use the full space.

1: Could you see the full size of the drive before you cloned it?


a Very remote possibility (virtually nil, in fact I am unsure why I write it) is that your Original HD parameters were set in the CMOS specifically rather then being set to AUTO. once again, VERY remote. Also, While your in there, look for something related to Hard disk setup. My Award BIOS has a option labelled "IDE HDD autoDetection" that will display the parameters (including total size) of all HD's it finds on the system. I just have to remember to press Esc at each prompt display.

On the other hand my computer is from 1999 so I can't even be sure that newer BIOS'es even have this type of option.

If the HD cloning util you used simply created an equal size partition on your new drive you'll be able to create new partitions in the remaining space. if you don't find any unallocated space though....