I recently bought a second hand 80GB hard drive but when I plugged it in and formatted it, it only showed about 30GB of space available (there is only 1 partition). The cover of the hard drive says 80GB. Is it possible that the cover has been changed or could this be some other software problem? Thanks in advance.
More info needed, there could be several things possible. What's your OS? For many operating systems using FAT32 file systems there is a 32g barrier. I know Windows 95 won't support a partiton larger than 32g and Windows 2000 won't format a FAT 32 partition larger than that. See: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q246818& http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q184006& Another possibility is that the drive was already partitioned. Did you check with fdisk to see if there was any partitions, like a non dos linux partition or something similar on the drive?
If you are using Fat32 you may be better off downloading a diagnostic disc from the maker of your drive.You can then re format you drive and set up from diagnostic disc which will give you your full capacity. John179
