Windows only seeing around 15gigs of a 500 gig drive

[Charles]

Originally Posted by TurcoLoco

Take all other drives out and use this drive alone to see if it made a difference.

I did that early on, hooked the drive up as the only drive and tried to install windows from scratch. The only option I had was creating a 15g partition.

[Pruzhany]

Partition software mixed with bios limitation is cause. Computer unable to set correct cluster size. Either upgrade the OS or partition and format the harddrive in a newer computer and then transfer it back.

[Charles]

Originally Posted by NeilVA

Partition software mixed with bios limitation is cause. Computer unable to set correct cluster size. Either upgrade the OS or partition and format the harddrive in a newer computer and then transfer it back.

Upgrade the OS? From Windows XP with all the latest service packs?
The OS had no problem with other hard drives I have formatted.

[Pruzhany]

Upgrade the OS?

A little history here. When WinXP came out it had a 64gig limit. So when the 80gig hdds came onto the market, they would only format to 16gig. A boot floppy was created to deal with this issue until sp1 came out. So as to your problem go to http://www.partition-tool.com and use EASEUS Partition Manager.

[Charles]

Originally Posted by NeilVA

A little history here. When WinXP came out it had a 64gig limit. So when the 80gig hdds came onto the market, they would only format to 16gig. A boot floppy was created to deal with this issue until sp1 came out. So as to your problem go to http://www.partition-tool.com and use EASEUS Partition Manager.

I tried EASUS too, early on.

[SLippi]

The bios recognizes large drives (has other large drives in the system) so it isn't the issue. The bios recognizes this drive as 15 gig. The OS, partition software, or any other software has absolutely nothing to do with the problem, the drive is bad.

Upgrading the OS or trying different applications won't help your problem since the bios sees a 15 gig drive any software you try will only see 15 gigs.

[TurcoLoco]

Originally Posted by Charles

I did that early on, hooked the drive up as the only drive and tried to install windows from scratch. The only option I had was creating a 15g partition.

Ok, then the BIOS might still be the culprit.
I'd suggest checking the related BIOS setting to make sure and using another ribbon cable but I have a feeling you already done that.

So, try running a low level format on the drive to see if that helped. If not, then I would have to heavily lean on the bad/mislabeled drive possibility.

[MediocreButArrogant]

What does the BIOS report as the name and model of the drive? If you could run smartctl against the drive (I'm sure most Linux live CD-ROMs have it) you could get output like this:

C:\Windows\system32>smartctl -a /dev/hda
smartctl 5.39.1 2010-01-28 r3054 [i686-pc-mingw32-win7(64)] (sf-win32-5.39.1-1)
Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 family
Device Model: ST3300831A
Serial Number: 5NF0KG9G
Firmware Version: 3.03
User Capacity: 300,069,052,416 bytes
Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is: 7
ATA Standard is: Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is: Fri Jun 04 11:28:51 2010 PDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
Enabled status cached by OS, trying SMART RETURN STATUS cmd.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x82) Offline data collection activity
was completed without error.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed
without error or no self-test has ever
been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection: ( 430) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
Suspend Offline collection upon new
command.
Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
No Conveyance Self-test supported.
Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported.
General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 1) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 101) minutes.