"Arno Wagner" wrote in message
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage wrote:

wrote:
Carl Lucas wrote:
Grinder wrote:
Carl Lucas wrote:
Have a Dell Dimension 8300 desktop. Just installed a Western Digital 160
gig hard drive without any problems. An issue is that the set up shows
the drive as 160 gig. However in Windows it shows it as a 126 gig.
What's with that?

After I installed it I went to "Control Panel", "Administrative Tools",
"Computer Management", "Disk Management". There it showed the drive as
126 gig. Of course I had to format it so I did.

So why is it shown as 126 and not 160?

To fully use drives larger than 127GB, you need 48-bit addressing. This
may not be implemented by your PC's BIOS. If you go into your BIOS
setup, can it see the full capacity of the drive?

It also must be enabled within windows. That comes with Windows 2000
SP4 and higher, or Windows XP SP2 and higher.

The Bios does see it as a Western Digital 160. How do I enable it in
Windows? I suppose I'll have to reformat it also.

If you're using Windows XP, just install the Service Pack like
Grinder said. Either SP1 or SP2 will do. You don't have to
enable 48-bit addressing yourself - at least I don't have to on
my machine.

Just installed SP1. (Different topic but my son says he's heard some
not too good things about SP2.) Now I get 149.05 gig. It said, as I
reformatted it, that the size was 152,625. Just confused why it's not
closer to 160 gig. Any input?

That size is correct. Microsoft uses the wrong units:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix

Side note: If you do not install SP2, Windows will destroy your
data at some point, unless you only use the first 128GB of the drive.

Hey babblebot, how can you use diskspace over 128GiB if Windows shows
only 128GiB.

And it's quite stupid of you to mock Microsoft and then use the same wrong
units yourself.

It is a knowen issue.

Of which you obviously only have half a clue.


Arno