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?

What version and service pack are you using? If it's below the limits
I've mentioned, I would start by upgrading to the appropriate service pack.

I suppose I'll have to reformat it also.

I expect you're right there.