Problem with size of new hard drive

[Asuman]

Hello Friends

Recently i have bought a Seagate Hard Disk Drives which is of 250Gb. I had install Windows Xp on it, and it seems to be working fine. The problem is that my Seagate Hard Disk Drives is only showing me around 20 Gb of storage, while BIOS recognizes 250 Gb. Whereas my computer also shows me the same thing having around 15 Gb backup partition. Can any one tell me why this problem occurs on my computer. Any one have nay idea about it? Any help on this would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[Hardwareman]

The common reason why hard drives do not show up the right capacity:

• FAT16 File system: Max 2GB partitions (I think this counts FDisk with no large disk support)
  
• FAT32 (on Win9X): 2 TB (Terrabytes)
  
• FAT32 (on Win2000 and XP): 32Gb
  
• NTFS (Pre SP1 installer): 127GB (or there abouts.)
  
• NTFS (SP1 or higher): 2 TB

You also have to check BIOS constraints, and maybe update to a newer versions. It can be a very old BIOS which can't go above 8GB (or even 2Gb in some cases), and some older ones have a ~32GB limit. Some boards also hit rock bottom at about 128GB.

I think you should fit a controller card, which can get around these problems. But even using a controller card,but Windows have their own limitation.

Without using a controller card, you can install a BIOS overlay, but these can lead to other problems with hard drives, and are not generally recommended.

[Maxforu]

You should be able to find an option to create an extended partition. It's immediately apparent in FDISK, but you'll have to find out how to do it with other partitioning utilities. When it has been created, you'll have the option to create logical drives within that partition. Windows XP allows you to partition hard drives from its CD, or from Start--> All Programs--> Administrative Tools--> Computer Management--> Disk Management. The hard drive partitions are represented graphically by rectangular spaces under headings for each drive (Disk 0, Disk 1, etc.). To create an extended partition, right-click on any empty space (unpartitioned space), and select the option to create an extended partition. There has to be an existing partition on the boot drive because Windows XP is operating from one. Alternatively, use the free QTParted. See the next item for information on it. It can create new partitions or resize existing partitions very easily.

[Killen]

Access Disk Management (type compmgmt.msc in the Run window and click Disk Management). There you can see a table and a graphical layout of your hard drive, you can manipulate the size of the partitions in that to get back the space which you have.