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Where did the extra SATA space go?
Saturday, 30 October, 2004
I just built a P4 system - a 160G Seagate SATA drive, on a P5P800 motherboard (Asus).
The drive shows up as 130G on the system BIOS and no amount of fiddling will get it to read any more.
The HardDrive utility available from Seagate doesn't run on XP Pro.
Any ideas ?
William Wallis, Sydney, NSW
 No, I’m not really sure what’s happened with that ‘missing’ 30G of drive space.
Your drive is unlikely to actually HAVE 160G of storage space available to start with, of course. Most hard drive manufacturers fudge the figures when they report storage space, using multiples of 1,000 instead of multiples of 1,024 to get a better figure. But that only accounts for a few Gigabytes overall.
If that figure of 130G is actually showing up in the BIOS screens before Windows loads it’s got me bewildered. If that figure is showing up within Windows, and you’ve simply used the term incorrectly, then there’s a couple of other possible explanations.
- Firstly, if you have ‘System Restore’ enabled that will eat up a reasonable slice of drive storage space for itself
- Secondly, if your PC is a name brand one such as HP or the like, it might have a ‘hidden’ Recovery partition on it with your Windows and bundled software stored on it. That would account for the rest of the missing space. But if it’s a locally assembled system or one you’ve assembled yourself, then that’s unlikely to be the explanation.
With that out of the way, consult your motherboard manual and in accordance with the instructions on pages 4-15 and 4-16 ensure that ‘Onboard IDE mode’ is set to ‘Enhanced’ and that ‘Enhanced Mode Support’ is set to ‘S-ATA’.
You should also ensure that your Windows XP installation is Service Pack 1 or later. It would also be a good idea to visit your motherboard’s download page and ensure you obtain and install both the latest Intel Chipset Utility version 5.02.1003 and the latest BIOS update version 1005. Consult section 4.1 of your motherboard manual for instructions about updating the BIOS.
But if you’ve got all that attended to, William, and that drive is still reporting as the wrong size, all I can really do is suggest that you contact Asus’ Support Team with the problem and see if they can assist.
Cheers, Terry O'Shanassy
 Reader solutions
Allan, ACTPosted: 03/11/2004 re: Where did the extra SATA space go? It could be as simple as a BIOS update fix, we all hope it is.
On startup, what does the post recognise the drive as ie: ST31300xxxx or ST31600xxxx.
*Second did you buy the HDD from a store or markets? How much did you pay? Was the container sealed or opened?
I'm almost thinking someone has fdisked the drive incorrectly and the 30gig is missing through not setting the remainning % space as a drive.
Thinking more on it, I can understand a software ( o/s ) or BIOS only seing 137 gig total. But i wasn't aware SeaGate sold a 130gig sata HDD. I thought the steppings were 120gig and 160gig, correct me if i'm wrong there. Which makes my think even more someone has attempted to partition the drive incorrectly.
Terry O'ShanassyPosted: 03/11/2004 Hey Morpheus You'll notice the answer given includes mention that Windows XP Service Pack 1 or better is necessary. SP1 contains the 48 bit LBA 'fix', and I'd hesitate to recommend any 'solution' which doesn't also include the installation of necessary security updates to a system.
But William's motherboard is a very recent one, and the drive being incorrectly recognised in BIOS is the real concern. There is always the chance that the particular combination of components in the system creates an issue that Asus has not yet encountered, and has not yet released a BIOS update to address.
Cheers linPosted: 02/11/2004 re: Where did the extra SATA space go? I doubt it is a Windows problem since it shows up as wrong size in the BIOS (ie. before Windows even loads).
The latest BIOS on Asus website is 1005, try putting that one on. BIOS 1002 has a fix for something to do with SATA but not sure if it affects you. As I said in my previous post, I would be very surprised if your BIOS didn't support 48bit LBA since its so new. MorpheusPosted: 01/11/2004 re: Where did the extra SATA space go? morpheus@ncable.net.au
Morpheus
try this link for an explanation of why Windows won`t support any HDD larger that 137 gig, I thought you might have been up on this Terry ??
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;303013
(Or try Service Pack 2 Morpheus? -PZ)
linPosted: 01/11/2004 re: Where did the extra SATA space go? Make sure the BIOS supports 48bit LBA. If you don't have this then you are limited to 137gb. Given how new the motherboard is I'm surprised that the BIOS wouldn't support it so I'm hoping you didn't get ripped off. AntzPosted: 01/11/2004 re: Where did the extra SATA space go? Hello Guys,
William from similar experiences i would suggest you upgrade your motherboard's BIOS, and see if that does the trick, if you already done so then go through the BIOS setup pages in the motherboard manual, as Terry said there are usually some extra options to change when you decide to use a SATA HDD. Of course there is one other explanation, some one ripped you off, hope its not this one!
Good Luck |