Seagate 500 Gig hard drive, only 131 Gig recognized

[mike13]

I am working on a friends Dell Inspiron 530 computer. Service tag DT0Y9F1 There was a power surge about three weeks ago. After running a lot of Dell diagonistics, I determined the Western Digital Sata 250 Gig hard drive was shot. I purchased a new Seagate 500 Gig hard drive Barracuda 7200 RPM, 500 Gig SATA 6.0 Gb-s 16 MB Cache etc. SN Z2AETO9V, AND PART NUMBER ST500DM002. It is clearly labeled on the tag that it is 500 Gig. However when I try to install Windows XP Pro, at the very beginning, Windows tells me that there is a partitioned section of 131,062 GB, with 131,061 GB available. I do not see any unpartitions sections. I then chose the NTFS format, and continued anyway, thinking that the rest of the hard drive space might show up after I installed Windows. It did not. I then wiped the hard drive, thinking that would remove any partitions etc, and I would start over. This time, I deleted the partition and tried to setup a new one. I was given the maximum space of 131,062 GB. Same result, only 131,062 Gig shows up. What am I doing wrong? Could the drive be labeled wrong from Seagate, or is there something I must do ?? Does that 6.0 Gb-s that I mentioned above, have anything to do with it. Help please, Mike

[submix8c]

YES! You bought a SATA-III (6g/s) and it only supports SATA-I (1.5g/s) and SATA-II (3g/s). Look at the documentation for your HDD - there should be a "limiter" jumper on it to down-level it to SATA-II. DO NOT connect it up again until you do this. Either the HDD or the MoBo will/may go bad... Edited December 30, 2011 by submix8c

[mike13]

I got it. I loaded Windows XP, which only recognized 131 GB of the 500 GB. I installed Service pack 1 and 2. Then I downloaded a Free partition manager. It found the 131 Partitioned section, and also the 345 unpartitioned section. I partitioned the 345 GB section, merged it with the oter section, and now drive "C" shows 465 GB of space out of the 500 GB. So I am a happy camper. Thanks, Mike

[submix8c]

Guess I should have ask about the XP level you installed (my bad). 48-Bit LBA Support wasn't in XP until SP1 (Service Pack 1). Might I suggest you slipstream SP3 into the CD (methods widely used across the internet, in addition to a "simple mode" in nLite that does it the "easy" way"). SP3 includes both SP1 and SP2 (get the full installer).

Also, did you change the jumper (curious)? It seems that that may have been required.

Please respond and might I suggest you change the title of the Topic to "Solved - yada yada".

[mike13]

submix8c, I will read up on slipstreaming SP3 into the CD. Never done it before.

I did not see any jumpers on the hard drive. I thought the newer SATA hard drives did not have jumpers.

All I know is that ALL is finally working. So I am a happy camper.

Thanks again for your suggestions. Mike

[Tripredacus]

I did not see any jumpers on the hard drive. I thought the newer SATA hard drives did not have jumpers.

To be specific, there are no "jumpers" already on a SATA drive, but they do have pins where one could be placed. Here is a picture example I found, you can see the pins here:

http://www.vpsems.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Sata-hard-drive.jpg

Some drives like SeaGate and Toshiba (and other notebook sized drives) also have pins, but look like this instead:

http://www.pacificgeek.com/productimages/xl/MK8034GSX-R.jpg

http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~chsmith/Clunk/Seagate%20Sata.jpg

[submix8c]

Um... I have a SATA-II I had to put in a SATA-I supported motherboard. There ARE pins and they take a smaller jumper (the size you find on newer SCSI drives). The purpose is to "limit" the drive from e.g. SATA-II (3.0) to SATA-I ( 1.5). I had assumed that a SATA-III would likewise have jumper(s).

Here it states

The jumper block adjacent to the SATA interface connector on SATA 300MB/sec drives can be used to force the drive into SATA 150MB/sec mode for use with older SATA controllers that only work with SATA 150MB/sec drives.

Further info in relation to SATA-III.

The jumper as a compatibility feature was ONLY required for *some* picky SATA 1 controllers, it was a dumb idea and never caught on, as SATA 2 and SATA 3 were created and no longer carried that specific feature as a requirement.

Apparently not the problem it used to be.