[LettuceChat]

I tried searching for the answer to this in the forum but couldn't find anything about it which surprised me.

I just installed a new 250 GB hard drive in an eMachine. When formating it for Win XP Home, it only shows 131062 MB. Emachine is a C2480 with AMD 2400+ processor.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

[jmw3]

XP will only show maximum of 137GB until you install SP1 or 2, can't remember which one off hand.

[LettuceChat]

I have up-dated to SP 2 and it still oinly shows 137 mb on my 250 mb hd. I checked for a bios up-date on the eMachines website but couldn't fine one ... thought that might be a necessary fix to see the full capacity of my HD.

Any other suggestions?

[D-Rock]

1. Backup your registry
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Atapi\Parameters\
3. Look at the key EnableBigLba and make sure the value is 1
4. Change the value to 1 if needed.
5. Reboot*******

[Triple6]

If you've now installed SP2 then you can go to Disk Management and create a secondary partition from the unallocated space on the drive.

Disk Management: http://www.theeldergeek.com/disk_management.htm

You shouldn't need to edit the registry once SP1 or SP2 is installed.

[FrankTheTank5421]

My problem was the mobo i had was so old it didn't support big hard drives... I bought a PCI controller card that supported booting and big hard drives and what not and my problem was solved.

[LettuceChat]

Thanks especially TripleSix .... I used your disk management suggestion and retrieved 107 MB of HD space by making another primary drive.

My computer didn't have that registry key mentioned by the other fellow so I was grateful for the easy fix via. disk management console.

I made a primary drive and formated it but wonder about the difference between that and an "extended drive" which were the two choices in the disk management system?

Thanks again!

[mclarenvj]

i THINK an extended drive is a drive that IS split up, but is both listed under 1 Drive. (hope that makes sense...)
e.g yu have 2 HDD, 1 primary 1 other. if the "1 other" drive is set as extended drive it would fuse (not literally) together to the primary to create 1 drive that is the 2 drives together.

NOTE: This all just an Educated Guess, and am sorry if i am wrong :s