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Replacing Hard Drive Full size not recognized?


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#1
DaveBHX

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Hi
I have a Acer Aspire 5002WLMi Turion Mobile 1.6GHz laptop

I am trying to upgrade, I have increased the ram to 2gig no problem.

However this laptop only had a 60gig ide drive

I have ordered and installed a Bios upgrade from Phoenix and installed the new bios

However, i am trying to install a Western Digital WDC2500BEVE 250gb hard drive in the laptop
Windows will on recognize it as 130gb allthough the drive is 250gb.

I thought upgrading the Bios flash
from Phoenix would solve this problem. But have reinsalled both Windows XP and Vista on it and get the same problem only recognizes the drive as 120gb

Any Ideas would be appreciated

DaveBHX
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#2
Adrenalin

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Hi DaveBHX!

Do you have Service Pack 2 Installed on your machine?
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#3
DaveBHX

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yes mate sp2 installed
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#4
Adrenalin

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Ok :)

Hmmm, 120GB you say... I know that without SP2 the machine will only recognise 132GB or something to that effect and Vista I'm not to clued up on. Never used it actually.

Try this, right click on My Computer > Manage > Disk Management.

What info does it give you?
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#5
SOORENA

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Have you tried going into the Windows Partitioner and seeing if there is an unpartitioned space? Or you can use PartitionMagic.

Soorena
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#6
DaveBHX

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I have looked in disk manage says its 128gb

also looked at partition magic on hirens disk also says 120gb

dont know about windows partitioner dont know how do do that?

if i run the western digital data life guard tool it says it is 250gb but limited to 132 gb due to windows restrainst
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#7
SOORENA

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The only thing I would suggest would be to get an external enclosure to use the hard drive as an external. Since windows cant recognize it.

Soorena
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#8
Adrenalin

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if i run the western digital data life guard tool it says it is 250gb but limited to 132 gb due to windows restrainst


And that was my first guess, I'm going to work right now so I will research a bit tonight then see if I can help further.
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#9
Seltox

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I got a 200gb Samsung HDD at the start of 2007, and I freaked at first, coz I installed XP on it and then when I was installing drivers/antivirus on it it told me I didn't have enough space!

After a few minutes of fiddling I found out that it only had like 4gb of partitioned space.

for the record I used 'fdisk' off of a 98SE install disk to get this info.
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#10
Adrenalin

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10-Apr-07 10:30:32
Your original problem was that you installed the XP OS onto your HDD without
the OS containing SP1 and/or SP2 at the time. Because of that you ran into
the 137 GB (approx 128 GB binary) disk capacity limitation which is imposed
by the XP OS when it does not contain either SP1 or SP2.

After you installed SP1/SP2 the system would recognize the total capacity of
your HDD but the remaining disk space above that 128 GB was "unallocated"
disk space, which, of course, you could partition/format using XP's Disk
Management utility.

At this point you really have two options if you want to have a single
partition encompassing the entire drive...
1. You need a third-party disk management utility such as Partition Magic
which will non-destructively merge your two current partitions into a single
one, or...
2. You can simply start over. Now that you have installed SP1/SP2 you can
make a fresh install of the OS and create a single partition if that's what
you want to do. Of course, by so doing you will be deleting all the updates
and will have to re:install them


There's something I found, which was my initial guess in the first place... If you right click on My Computer > Manage > Disk Management you should have 'unpartitioned space' which is free, it can be converted into a NTFS drive or FAT32 by formatting it, however please don't try this if you don't know how. You could wipe the whole drive clean.

The other thing on the net floation around is the BIOS issue, however you said already that you got the latest BIOS.
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#11
Seltox

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I installed without SP1 or 2 and I still don't have them, and I have 186gb capacity?
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#12
DaveBHX

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Guys i installed winodws Vista ultamate 64 bit and i have down all the microsoft updates available .

I then right click on My Computer > Manage > Disk Management.
and it still only shows 120gb not 250gb.

If i make cd boot disk and run Western Digitals Data Life guard program it allows me to change and reformat to 250gb but then windows will recognize or see the drive
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#13
Adrenalin

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DaveBHX,

I heard what you said about installing Vista but I am not to familiar with it :)

Western Digital has quite a big FAQ section, here

Also you could try this site from Microsoft.

Does the drive show up as 250GB in the BIOS?
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#14
DaveBHX

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Thanks Adrenalin

Will take vista off and try winodws xp at weekend when i have more time mate

thanks again

will let u know how i get on

Dave
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#15
DaveBHX

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Hi Adrenalin

I now can get windows xp pro to see the extented drive shows £137GB as C drive and the remainder as G drive iy doing click on My Computer > Manage > Disk Management you should have 'unpartitioned space' which is free, it can be converted into a NTFS drive or FAT32 by formatting it,


you stated please don't try this if you don't know how. You could wipe the whole drive clean.

i have right clicked it and clicke format on the extended G drive it trieds to format but fails, it does show as a healthy drive any suggestions

I think the main reason for the problem was the drivers windows suggest was intel but infact the drives were SiS
i downloaded all the drivers form SiS so nopw disk management can see see the extanted partition but will not format.

I have tried Partition magic but when it loads it cant find any drives it says In fail Eroor 117 Partions drive letter cannot be identified any suggestions on this would also be helpful


Many thanks

Dave BHX
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