[philshantz]

I have a Western Digital 200GB second hard drive with two partitions on it and I wanted to make it a single drive. (both partitions were empty and had been formatted).

Using "System Explorer" I deleted the partition but the drive capacity still reads 127 Gigabytes -- which was the size of the larger of the two partitions. In the "disk management" tab of System Explorer the graphic display shows one drive where there was two (and a longer "bar") but I can't seem to get the computer to recognize the new size.

I've checked it, defragmented it, and begged with it but so far nothing works.
I also downloaded and tried a program called "HDD Capacity Restore" but it says the "device has to be single on a channel", which it is not.

How can I resolve this?

Edited by philshantz, 24 October 2008 - 11:13 AM.

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Have you tried going into Computer Management>disk management and deleting both the partitions on the second drive. Then Reboot the computer, go back into disk management and repartition the drive as a single drive, then format it as ntfs. If you right click on the drive or partition a menu will come up to do these things.

SRX660

[SRX660]

Have you tried going into Computer Management>disk management and deleting both the partitions on the second drive. Then Reboot the computer, go back into disk management and repartition the drive as a single drive, then format it as ntfs. If you right click on the drive or partition a menu will come up to do these things.

SRX660

[philshantz]

Now THERE"S an idea, I think I missed something I should have caught here, dangit!...let me know.

Anyway, here's what I did: In Disk Management earlier; the graphical representation of my second drive showed as a horizontal bar with two sections, one partition of 60 GB and one of 140GB (actually, each less, of course).
I right-clicked on the smaller of the two partitions and clicked on "Delete Partition" in the drop-down menu. I now show a SINGLE horizontal bar showing the 127GB capacity.

And here's where I think I may have gone wrong: The SINGLE "bar" I know see on my screen is visually the same length as the earlier 2-SECTION bar, so I thought that SHOULD graphically represent the same TOTAL amount of Gigabytes as the earlier one...but when I stop and think a minute it might just represent the remaining partition "stretched out" to fill my monitor screen...

COULD it be this simple? Clue: If I now DO right-click on the "single" bar I still do get the option of "delete partition"...I may have made the mistake of thinking of a "partition" as similar to a "wall" in a room: remove the "partition" (wall) and make one "larger" room out of two...where on my computer the analogy reflects actually removing one "room" leaving only the other one

Is this correct? (If I delete the remaining partition my hard drive won't completely disappear??

If so, that's WAAAY too easy a solution!
Philip

[SRX660]

When i have done this it usually shows the drive as "Unallocated Space" ( meaning there is no formatting on the drive). After deleting the larger space it should show a single drive of "Unallocated Space". You should then be able to right click and format the space as a active volume, and after that format the drive as ntfs.

If the whole drive just disappears from your computer, i would download the WD Lifeguard drive tools and partition and format the drive with them. If you do not have the caviar SE drive go to the second link and pick the right drive. You can make a bootable CD with the lifeguard tools to partition and format the drive with. Be very CAREFUL that you do NOT partition the "C" drive( your first drive) in the computer. A customer did this and then tried saying it was my fault for telling him how to use the software, so i need to tell you this.

http://support.wdc.c...s...d=1&lang=en

http://support.wdc.c...s...1=6&lang=en

Heres the Lifeguard tutorial in PDF format.

http://www.wdc.com/e...2779-001005.pdf

And a little more info on how to use.

http://freewareapp.c...tools_download/

SRX660

[philshantz]

OK, I deleted the partition and the result was 128GB of unallocated space, not the 200GB I was hoping for. So I created a partition out of that and am back at square 1...

[SRX660]

Are you running Window XP without the SP1 service pack? The First version of XP still could not see drives larger than 128 Gigabytes. I now wonder if the drive was partitioned into 2 drives just for that reason.The OS must use the 48 bit addressing to be able to see drives larger than 128 Gigs.

If you have a older XP computer then the motherboard may not support 48 bit addressing and you will probably need to use the WD tools to get back the other 73 gigs as a second partition.

http://www.48bitlba.com/winxp.htm

SRX660

Edited by SRX660, 24 October 2008 - 02:44 PM.

[philshantz]

Running WIN2k SP4

...but it's SOLVED!

...thanks. I downloaded Western Digital Data Lifeguars Tools and got it worked out (involved a registry change to recognize the larger drive)

Now I realize a 200GB drive doesn't really have 200 GB of available space, but 12GB less?

(That's 30 times the capacity of the largest hard drive available on my first computer! and I'm not counting my TRS80...)

See Below:
!

Edited by philshantz, 24 October 2008 - 03:45 PM.

[SRX660]

You can lose about 15% of a Terrabyte drive simply because drive makers use the metric system to measure their drives while Microsoft uses the binary system. So a drive of 1000 megabytes in the decimal (metric) is a gigabyte. The same drive in windows( Binary is 1024 bytes in a megabyte) comes out to 976.5 megabytes. Now you say that is only a little over 2% of the drive. What happens is as the size gets larger more space is lost. Up to a terrabyte hard drive you lose 15% and above a terrabyte you can lose close to 22%.

So you take your 200 gig drive and divide it into your 186 gigs showing and you have lost 7%. My hitachi 160 Gig Sata drive shows 152.6 gigs( 5% loss).

Hope you understand this.

SRX660

[philshantz]

Of course, and I DID know all that at one time but I guess it remained theoretical knowledge for me and never quite filtered into my day to day brain...