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Hard drive formating help

Discussion in 'PC hardware help' started by cmdsnow, Mar 13, 2007.

  1. cmdsnow

    cmdsnow Member

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    Yesterday I had to replace my fathers hard drive, is old one received a smart error and failed a stability test. Everythings working with the new one except that its a 200Gb hard drive and its being read as two partitions of about 15Gb. Does any one know of a solution? Any help would be much appreciated.
     
  2. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    what size does the bios sees the drive as?
     
  3. cmdsnow

    cmdsnow Member

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    both the setup and the initial boot info say 33520MB, or 33820 I can't remember.
    Could the problem be we need to preformat and partition the drive before installing the OS, because as I said before the main drive fried and we had to install this one and then but windows on it. By the way the installer cd is XP home but its pre SP-1.
     
    Last edited: Mar 13, 2007
  4. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    check the jumper on back of hd as appears to be set for 32gig. also possible the bios is old enough not to read past 32gig without a bios update but not certain til you check the jumper. as you don't have sp1 or 2 than will have to partition hd as pre sp1 xp's can only read upto 137gig so will have 2 partitions of 137 & 63gig. do you have another spare hd of about 6gig?
     
  5. cmdsnow

    cmdsnow Member

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    I've only got a spare 1gb and thats by taking it out of a 12 year old computer and I can't install the os on that. But I'll check the jumper as soon as I get home, and this may be stupid but how can I update the bios, I may actual know how but I've never had to do it before. And I was thinking I'd have to partition it 137 and 63 thanks for clearing that up for me.
     
    Last edited: Mar 13, 2007
  6. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    what is the make & model number of the computer or motherboard?
     
  7. cmdsnow

    cmdsnow Member

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    the computer is a sony viao PCV-RX572 256 mb ram 1.8ghz processor and its from 2001 i think, I don't know the board number and I doubt I'll find in on the machine because of the horrible case design. Once my father gets home I'll try some of your suggestions he just doesn't want me messing with things until he's home, and I can't find the manual to check the jumper pin configuration. By the way the Hd is a 200Gb maxtor ATA.
     
  8. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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  9. cmdsnow

    cmdsnow Member

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    Thanks I had it set up right. WE've decided its just not worth the trouble of formatting again, and we've come to the conclusion that its the recovery disc because it keeps forcing two partitions, either way, and seems to be just overwritting our formatting attempts. I think its trying to force the drive to the exact settings it had when we bought it which was two partitions. And he never used more than 20gb or 30gb on the old drive and I'm giving him my computer in a few months anyway so its really just not worth it right now. But thanks for the help anyway.
     
  10. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    no problem, teach & learn
     

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