computer confusion

[aemsee]

I installed a 500 GB hard drive on my kids computer, but it still thinks it has a 40 GB drive. I did use cloning software that came with it. Any idea how to get it to realize it has 500GB? It is a Dell Optiplex 620 running XP home.Thanks

[Geonovast]

Back in the day, some harddrives had jumper settings that limited the space... I doubt that's the problem, but it doesn't hurt to check.

 

Was the harddrive you cloned from a 40GB?

[Wallyman]

Look in your BIOS settings, there is usually an auto detect setting you can try. It may need you to tell it it has a new hard drive

[aemsee]

I forget how to enter the BIOS. What is wierd is that in some places it shows 500GB, and others (like under 'My Computer" and drive 'c' properties), shows 40GB

[aemsee]

Yes, the HD that was cloned was the original 40

[freakjeep93]

when starting th pc push DEL and it will go into bios

[beepbeepmyredjeep]

I don't believe this is a BIOS problem.

 

There is a difference between physical drives and partitions.

 

One physical drive can contain multiple partitions

 

When you performed your clone, you may have cloned the partition (C:), and not the physical drive.

 

Unfortunately under Windows XP, it's not possible without 3rd party software to expand the current partition.

 

This results in a 500 GB physical drive with one assigned partition with a size of 40 GB. The remainder of the disk remains unusable until you format it, and create an additional partition.

 

Take a look at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309000

 

You'll want to use the unallocated space to create a new (second) primary partition.

 

You can then use the second partition to install additional programs. Just make sure when installing you specify the new drive letter.

[AmJay]

I'm pretty sure you have an unpartioned 460GB of disk space. If you want to expand your current partition look for a program call GPARTED. Although designed for Linux it will expand Windows partitions. Google Gparted and you should be able to find it. Also if I remember there is a 140GB limit per partition. I'm not real sure since I don't run windows too much.

[Burls]

Xp has a basic partition utility built in. Control Panel> Administrative Tools> Computer Management(Icon) -- Underneath the Storage section on the left side -- Disk Management

[aemsee]

think I found the answer but can't try til after work. Thanks guys

[Eagle]

Yes, the HD that was cloned was the original 40

The 40 gig drive had one 40-gig partition. More than likely, when you cloned the drive it cloned the partition size as well as identification. I don't remember hos to get into the partition info in the new versions of Windows -- what you're looking for is the equivalent of the old FDISK command in MS-DOS. You want to find out how many partitions your drive has and what sizes.

 

Since you are only seeing 40 gigs, there are (I think) only two possibilities:

 

(1) You have one 40-gig partition and a lot of unallocated space; or

 

(2) You have one 40-gig partition and a second, 460-gig partition that needs to have a logical drive letter assigned to it and be formatted before you can use it.

 

I believe there is a utility (but I don't recall if it's in Windows or aftermarket) to dynamically expand a partition to take up all unused, unallocated space available on the drive. Maybe Google on "Expand+Partition"?

[aemsee]

Eagle was right. It was a disk partition issue. Tried the partition utility several different ways. Problem was that part of the computer recognized the partition as being 480+ GB, but some areas saw the old 40 GB. So when I tried to use the partition utility, it thought it was already the 480 GB part and couldn't enlarge it any more. So I just reformatted the drive and all is good now. Too bad I paid an extra $20 for the USB hard drive chassis and software over the price of the HDD. Oh well. Thanks for all your responses guys.