Windows 7 HDD Issue

The issue is that Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit recognizes my 300 GB+ IDE HDD as 127 GB in explorer, but in device manager it shows the entire space. I've tried to figure this problem out and posted on other forums which has led me here. I've copied the following from another forum. Please help if you can.

This hardware setup worked fine with both Windows Vista Ultimate 32 bit and Win 7 RC 32 bit. As you probably know, you cannot upgrade from Win 7 RC to the full version without some tricky registry editing. I didn't mind formatting my HDD because the only thing contained on it was the Windows 7 RC OS and some games/programs that I could re-install. So during the installation process of Win 7 Ultimate, I formatted the HDD I use for my OS. The installation could not "see" the other HDD that I use for storage. I unplugged the storage drive, installed Windows to the HDD I use for my OS, and then plugged the storage HDD back in.

When viewing it in explorer, it shows that it is 127 GB/127 GB free, or empty. As I stated before this drive is over 300 GB. After searching the internet I noticed a trend - this problem has occurred with previous Windows versions (XP, Vista, etc.) and Win 7 but nobody really seems to have a solution for Windows 7. I've tried many different things already, including changing settings in the BIOS, reinstalling the HDD, reinstalling Vista, reinstalling Win 7 - everything short of editing the registry or formatting the drive.

I have talked to a few friends about this problem, and to a family member who works for Microsoft and is extremely intelligent. Nobody can figure out what exactly is causing this problem. My issue is that I really don't want to lose my data on the 300 GB drive.

A few additional ideas I have are to change the disk to "dynamic" instead of basic which was suggested by an IT guy at work. Someone else suggested I delete the windows.old folder, but I'm not sure how that would help or even why it would be on my PC since I formatted the OS HDD. I'm not sure if this issue has anything to do with the fact that I changed to a 64 bit OS. I attached a 160 GB USB HDD and it is displaying the space correct (above the 127 GB limit). Also, I took the problem HDD out of my PC and put it in a friends PC who is running both Win 7 and Ubuntu - the same problem occurs. We can see that the drive is a 300 GB+ drive, but it will only allow us to access 127 GB. There is no unallocated space. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Windows 7 (6.1) Ultimate Edition (Build 7600)
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5600+
MB Brand : Ellitegroup
MB Model : Nforce4m-a(V3.0)
GPU Type: Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTS
Memory: 2 gb DDR2 dual channel
HDD: Maxtor EIDE 350 GB
HDD: Western Digital Raptor 80 GB SATA

If you have a second 300GB drive, try backing up your data to it then formatting the drive that won't show correctly. If not, send it to a cloud storage service - I don't trust the cloud myself but it won't be in there for very long at all -and format it. I can't see anything in your setup that could cause errors, and if you've tried editing BIOS settings, reinstalling it, etc. then I can't think of anything else that might help.

jdelroyc said:

The issue is that Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit recognizes my 300 GB+ IDE HDD as 127 GB in explorer, but in device manager it shows the entire space. I've tried to figure this problem out and posted on other forums which has led me here. I've copied the following from another forum. Please help if you can.

This hardware setup worked fine with both Windows Vista Ultimate 32 bit and Win 7 RC 32 bit. As you probably know, you cannot upgrade from Win 7 RC to the full version without some tricky registry editing. I didn't mind formatting my HDD because the only thing contained on it was the Windows 7 RC OS and some games/programs that I could re-install. So during the installation process of Win 7 Ultimate, I formatted the HDD I use for my OS. The installation could not "see" the other HDD that I use for storage. I unplugged the storage drive, installed Windows to the HDD I use for my OS, and then plugged the storage HDD back in.

When viewing it in explorer, it shows that it is 127 GB/127 GB free, or empty. As I stated before this drive is over 300 GB. After searching the internet I noticed a trend - this problem has occurred with previous Windows versions (XP, Vista, etc.) and Win 7 but nobody really seems to have a solution for Windows 7. I've tried many different things already, including changing settings in the BIOS, reinstalling the HDD, reinstalling Vista, reinstalling Win 7 - everything short of editing the registry or formatting the drive.

I have talked to a few friends about this problem, and to a family member who works for Microsoft and is extremely intelligent. Nobody can figure out what exactly is causing this problem. My issue is that I really don't want to lose my data on the 300 GB drive.

A few additional ideas I have are to change the disk to "dynamic" instead of basic which was suggested by an IT guy at work. Someone else suggested I delete the windows.old folder, but I'm not sure how that would help or even why it would be on my PC since I formatted the OS HDD. I'm not sure if this issue has anything to do with the fact that I changed to a 64 bit OS. I attached a 160 GB USB HDD and it is displaying the space correct (above the 127 GB limit). Also, I took the problem HDD out of my PC and put it in a friends PC who is running both Win 7 and Ubuntu - the same problem occurs. We can see that the drive is a 300 GB+ drive, but it will only allow us to access 127 GB. There is no unallocated space. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Windows 7 (6.1) Ultimate Edition (Build 7600)
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5600+
MB Brand : Ellitegroup
MB Model : Nforce4m-a(V3.0)
GPU Type: Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTS
Memory: 2 gb DDR2 dual channel
HDD: Maxtor EIDE 350 GB
HDD: Western Digital Raptor 80 GB SATA

There is a setting in BIOS, that I am sure one of our more learned members will know that limits the size of hard drives read. I suggest a look through BIOS.

Good Luck

Ken

If you formatted and done a clean install there should be no Windows.old folder.
If you have one, something went wrong along the way.


When you installed Win7, at the setup screen did you right click and delete all partitions on that drive??

And did it show 300GB Unallocated at that point?

Creating 1 single partition at this point should have resulted in a prompt asking to create a secondary partition for sysytem files (Which would be 100MB)

Did you get all of this, or did just go straight to install?



---Im curious .. Open a CMD Promp as admin.
type: dispart
then type; list disk

What does it show there?

zigzag3143 said:

There is a setting in BIOS, that I am sure one of our more learned members will know that limits the size of hard drives read. I suggest a look through BIOS.

Good Luck

Ken

Hi Ken,

I don't think this is the case anymore with modern systems. It used to be like that before the 127GB? barrier was broken. I could be wrong or completely misunderstanding what you're saying, though I have no such setting in my BIOS.

If he has partitions, it could be that Windows hasn't assigned a drive letter to them.

Wishmaster said:

If you formatted and done a clean install there should be no Windows.old folder.
If you have one, something went wrong along the way.


When you installed Win7, at the setup screen did you right click and delete all partitions on that drive??

And did it show 300GB Unallocated at that point?

Creating 1 single partition at this point should have resulted in a prompt asking to create a secondary partition for sysytem files (Which would be 100MB)

Did you get all of this, or did just go straight to install?



---Im curious .. Open a CMD Promp as admin.
type: dispart
then type; list disk

What does it show there?

Diskpart shows 2 drives.

Disk 0 is 279 GB 0 free
Disk 1 is 69 GB 0 free

Windows.old is not on my system. I never installed an OS to the 300 GB drive. It has always been on the smaller WD raptor drive. I only formatted the smaller drive, and left the other drive untouched. It never showed anything unallocated. Also, responding to an earlier poster, I did a clean install not an upgrade. I would estimate I had appx. 120 - 150 GB of data used on the storage drive. So to sum it up:

I formated the drive that had the OS on it (the WD raptor), then installed Win 7. The problem was that it wouldn't let me install it to the raptor with my storage drive plugged in. Once I unplugged, it allowed me to install. When I plugged it back in, the space was all messed up.

dotKuro said:

If you have a second 300GB drive, try backing up your data to it then formatting the drive that won't show correctly. If not, send it to a cloud storage service - I don't trust the cloud myself but it won't be in there for very long at all -and format it. I can't see anything in your setup that could cause errors, and if you've tried editing BIOS settings, reinstalling it, etc. then I can't think of anything else that might help.

My problem is that no data is showing. It shows that 127 GB/127 GB is free, but I know the drive is larger.

You have 1 300GB drive (just data) and a 70GB raptor that Windows is on??

If so, it seems Windows recognizes the drives, and the correct capacity.

What Sygnus has suggested very well could be the case.

How exactly does Disk management look? It may need letters assigned

Wishmaster said:

You have 1 300GB drive (just data) and a 70GB raptor that Windows is on??

If so, it seems Windows recognizes the drives, and the correct capacity.

What Sygnus has suggested very well could be the case.

How exactly does Disk management look? It may need letters assigned

The capacity is definitely incorrect on the 300 GB drive as it is showing as 127 GB empty. As I stated before, I had around 100-150 GB of data on it. Disk management is showing the raptor as the C: drive and the storage drive as the D: drive. So...

Drive C

69.15 GS, Basic, NTFS, Healthy, primary partition

Drive D

279.48 GB, Basic, NTFS, primary partition.