Problem formatting 1TB hard drive

**Rajesh4mLA** · 08-09-2008

I want to format my 1TB hard drive. But as soon as I started, it told me that something is wrong with my hard drive. I just ignored the message and moved further. But now the problem is that the hard drive can only be seen as 32MB rather than 1TB or something similar. Please help me. I am running Windows XP Pro SP1.

**Dutta** · 08-09-2008

According to me you have partitioned your hard drive in Fat32 or some lower file system and need to reformat it to NTFS for getting the full hard drive space back.

**Yitzchak909** · 08-09-2008

FAT12 has a limit of 32MB
FAT16 has a limit of 2GB and 4GB
FAT32 has a limit of 127.53GB up to 8TB

So IMO, if you are using some software to partition your hard drive then that software may have partitioned your hard drive in FAT12. In this case I would recommend you to use Windows CD to partition your hard drive.

I think you should also get SP3 to avoid any further problem.

**Rkhon** · 08-09-2008

Most harddisk manufacturer's allows you to format your hard drive in lower file system. I think you should visit there site and see what to do in such case.

**samar69** · 16-09-2008

This seems to be similar problem as that of mine. I did a complete re-format of my C drive recently. Everything seems to be fine except that my second hard drive which is of 400gb is shown as 125gb (or so didn't remember).

How can I get the whole volume of drive back again?

**Lemog** · 16-09-2008

What OS are you using? Because Windows XP SP1 or later and Windows 2000 SP3 or later supports drives larger than 137 GB as they add 48-bit addressing support to the OS.