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Solved: Hard Drive GB Confusion

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KissKristyn's Avatar
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17-Jul-2008, 06:54 PM #1
Question Solved: Hard Drive GB Confusion
I have a 100GB external hard drive. When I view the My Computer folder it states that 'Local Disk F' has a total size of 4.65GB. And only a few documents filled that space up. Why is my computer not reading that the hard drive has 100GB?
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17-Jul-2008, 08:47 PM #2
Because it's not partitioned that way. Right-click on My Computer and select Manage. Select Disk Management. Look at the hard drive now.

Willing to bet that it is formatted in FAT32 (which has a limit). Back up the files on the drive and delete the partition. Now reformat it (preferably in NTFS). You will get your disk space back.

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crjdriver's Avatar
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17-Jul-2008, 10:03 PM #3
Courtney windows can use a drive formatted as fat32 >32gig [which is the limit above which windows will not format as fat32 however is can use a larger fat32 drive]

I would bet you have unallocated space on the drive. Post a screenshot of disk management.
KissKristyn's Avatar
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18-Jul-2008, 12:49 AM #4
It's already in NTFS format.

Here's a screenshot...

crjdriver's Avatar
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18-Jul-2008, 08:53 AM #5
OK, you have most of the drive unallocated. To fix this, simply copy whatever data you might have on "F" to C. Now delete the partition on F so it shows all unallocated. Create a partition and format as ntfs. You will now have the full use of your drive.
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18-Jul-2008, 01:43 PM #6
yep hes right you have to recreate that partition in full size or you kan ust alocate the rest as a new partition but that way you will have 3 drives
KissKristyn's Avatar
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18-Jul-2008, 08:46 PM #7
Thank you! All fixed.
crjdriver's Avatar
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18-Jul-2008, 09:53 PM #8
You are welcome
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