250 GB HD showing up as 70.5 GB?

[OuchMyComputer]

Hey there, I purchased a 250 GB Western Digital HD and used it shortly as my master IDE HD. Now I have purchased a SATA HD and am using that as my main HD but sadly the 250 GB is only showing up as 70.5 GB? I'm not quite sure why it is showing up like this. What would cause it to show up like that? I have it set up as the "slave" IDE HD and it's on the second slot of the ribbon cable. am I doing something wrong? Any help is appreciated! Thanks in advance! :)

[Midknyte]

what OS? if it's xp, did you install SP1?

are you sure your bios can recognize drives larger than 137G? do you have the latest bios?

[OuchMyComputer]

Yeah, sorry about that...I'm running Windows XP and have SP1 installed. I'm quite sure that my BIOS can recognize drives larger than 137G. How can I be sure? I've got Version 1008 of Asus's A7N8X-E Deluxe BIOS. I think I read it somewhere that it recognizes drives larger than 137GB, but I'm not sure.

[Midknyte]

You're cool on the support:
http://www.asus.com/support/english/techref/48bithdd/index.aspx

Note: Model manufactured after 1st January, 2003 will all support 48bit HDD (137 GB HDD).

Run diskmgmt.msc and see what's up with the drive.

[OuchMyComputer]

Well, the only thing that I see that is different with that drive is it is Fat32 instead of NTFS. Does that make a difference?

[OuchMyComputer]

Well I did find something else out, this seems kinda weird, but when I check in "My Computer" it says 70.5 GB is available on my F: and even in the Disk Management it says 70.57 GB Capacity. Below it shows the black and blue horizontal bars that represent "Unallocated" and "Primary partition" drive space. It shows the F: having 232.88 GB and "127.99 GB Fat32 Healty (Active)" and then "104.89 GB Unallocated". Why are there two totals for the total disk space? There is the 70.57 and then there is the 127.99. I'm kinda confused.

[Midknyte]

that's very strange. I would blow the partitions on the drive and recreate them using diskmgmt.msc

[OuchMyComputer]

Well I got rid of the partition and now the drive does not show up in "My Computer" but when I go to diskmgmt.msc it shows up as "Disk 0" "basic" "232.88 GB" "Online" and it says it's all Free Space, but it has no Drive letter on there. What would cause this? Am I forgetting something? Why is it showing up as 232.88 GB and not the 250 GB? How do I go about formatting the entire thing? Thanks!

[OuchMyComputer]

Okay nevermind, I got it showing up and working in "My Computer" and I formatted it. My final question is why is it showing up as 232.88 GB instead of 250 or something closer to 250 GB?

[Midknyte]

1GB is not 1,000,000,000 Bytes. it is 1024*1024*1024.

250,000,000,000/(1024*1024*1024)=232.8GB

[Johnny Fist]

In other words, "thats just how it is."