250GB HD showing half full after clean XP install

[ukjester]

Hi folks,

I recently bought a new Hitachi 250GB SATA hard drive and created one primary partition of full size using Partition Magic on a boot disk. I then installed windows xp on it (no service packs). Straight after install I noticed it showed as a 232GB drive (fair enough) but also said around 113GB of space had been used.

I have now installed some more applications and the total file size of everything on the drive totals 24.1GB. My C drive shows 134GB used with 98.3GB free.

I guess it's something to do with partitioning larger HD's but I'm new to all that so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.
UK Jester

 

[raybay]

You need to download the latest BIOS and chipset from the manufacturer of the computer or the manufacturer of the motherboard.

 

[Samstoned]

you may need service pak 2 for that size drive
do search here for sticky on XP large drive fix

 

[Rick]

I then installed windows xp on it (no service packs)

You need SP2.

 

[ukjester]

It seems that after Partition manager had correctly formatted my hard drive to the full size, I foolishly let Windows installation re-format it which caused the problem. Thanks for the advice anyway

 

[Tedster]

see the accessing large hard drives in the guides forum