Hard Drive Problem- can't get it to recognize size.

[koinhelgo]

Bought a "refurbished" computer second hand off ebay, got totally screwed with it cos it is supposed to be an Athlon 2000+ (1.533) but is a Duron 1.3 as well as other problems.
Incidently I bought three pcs off ebay- supposed to be an extra Christmas present for my son as an upgrade to his 450 mHz P2. The first (1 gig Athlon) wouldn't post and when I did eventually get it to boot it crashed upom using USB - I have since just about cured all it's ills, but it inspired me to buy the next one- a 1.6 Athlon - supposed to be with a good MOBO and graphics card, arrived with no graphics card and the heatsink and fan was loose from the Processor. Got this to work also but doesn't seem too good- MOBO is crap, has a crappy ISA modem- for goodness sake. The third PC I bought to replace the first two is also crap. The guys have not answered any of my complaint emails. Out of the three pcs, only one came with a power cord! The moral of the story is basically stick to cheap DVDs and CDs on ebay otherwise get screwed like me- I have ended up ordering a new pc for my son- not much fun for my boy opening up a picture of a pc with an invoice on Christmas day. I have spent double what I would have done in the first place had I just ordered a new pc.
Anyway.............
The guy said that it was a new 80 gig HDD (IDE) but it didn't have any OS.
I installed XP straight off a disc- it did the usual checking and formatting etc, but when Windows installed says the drive is 33.6 gig.
I thought it was maybe only a 40 gig drive but on opening the case it definitely says 80 gig on the specs on top of the drive.
I reset the BIOS but there is no change- I can't remember what MOBO it is and I'm at work now so can't check.
I installed Partition Magic 8, but it says the capacity is 33.6 gig with (I think) 6 gig recoverable.
I thought I would do a low level format from DOS, but unfortunately the Floppy drive supplied with the pc is also broken. So I can't access a boot disc or anything else.
Surely if the HDD was broken it wouldn't allow me to install XP to it or it would say somewhere that the drive was 80 gig of which so much was unusable.
Any ideas would be welcome as to how I can "find" the lost gigs or even completely format it.
I have a new floppy coming to use, but I have just noticed the original floppy is integrated with the case, so I won't be able to install it, so I will just have to have the case open and leave the floppy dangling to use it (hopefully)

[smearbrick1]

What are the jumper settings on the drive?

[koinhelgo]

Didn't really see any jumpers on the drive- didn't really look though.
I am not too familiar with hard drives- always just used the ones supplied with any pc I've bought. I am familiar with jumper settings on back of optical drives though- Is it similar with HDDs?

[isogonic]

you can download diagnostic/formatting tools from the HD manufactors websites in floppy or cd versions.

[b1tchm4gn3t]

Is it similar with HDDs?

exactly the same

[ranchhand]

When you go into Explore and R click on C / properties, what size does it give you? Also, do you have Service Pack 2 installed? I had a couple of problems getting XP to recognize the full capacity of large disks (120-150 gigs) until I installed SP2, and then it recognized the full amount immediately.

[koinhelgo]

Thanks for the replies
When I go into explorewr and right click and use properties it says the drive has 28 gig free- it has some things installed.
In the BIOS it states the drive as 33566 (I think)
The drive is only 80 gig so all of it should have registered- also the version of XP I installed has SP2 slipstreamed into it.
The guy has replied to me and says that the hard drive was bought new two weeks before I bought it from him- he also says the floppy was working fine though- I'll try it in a different pc
I have the day off work tomorrow so can take the pc to bits again and have a look at the drive, then go to the manufactures website and look for tools and the like (and put on cd)- I didn't think of that so thanks to isogenic
Regards

[ranchhand]

Just a quick question... when you prepared the drive for XP - since the drive was used, did you first remove all partitions on that drive so that it registered only raw space? At that point, it should have given you how large the amount of raw space was. That would be the true size of the harddrive. Then did you create one large, main partition? Are you sure you formatted in NTFS, and not FAT32?

[koinhelgo]

The drive was formatted in NTFS- I didn't reaally look at the size after format, just let xp get on with things.
However, I think I have found the answer, another forum site suggested the drive may be restricted to 33 gigs via jumpers at the back, cos some (older) BIOS don't recognise drives bigger than 33 gig.
I haven't managed to get at the drive tonight, but I looked at the Seagate site and it says the Barracude has a jumper setting to "clip" the drive to 33.8 gig. I will have to take a look inside the case and check to see if the jumper is in the clipping setting. It hopefully is this that's causing the problem.
Regards.

[jollyjohn]

G'day
I hope this helps:

EnableBigLba Registry Setting in Windows 2000 and XP
Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Windows 2000 SP3 add support for 48-bit Logical Block Addressing (LBA), which lets you access hard disks larger than 137GB. To enable 48-bit LBA with Windows 2000 SP3, you must also make sure the EnableBigLba value is defined and set properly in the Windows registry. In the original release of Windows XP, 48-bit LBA can be enabled for testing purposes by also adding the EnableBigLba registry value. With Windows XP Service Pack 1, the EnableBigLba registry value is no longer used or needed.
Manual Method:
To enable EnableBigLba in the Windows registry, perform the following steps:
Start a registry editor (e.g., regedit.exe). In Windows, click on Start->Run, enter “regedit”.
Navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\atapi\Parameters registry subkey.
From the Edit menu, select New, DWORD Value.
Enter the name EnableBigLba, then press Enter.
Double-click the new value, set it to 1, then click OK.
Close the registry editor.
Restart the machine for the change to take effect.

Good luck and Happy New Year
John