its a wd 250 GB HD and it only formated to 140gbso there is problem #1but the worst thing is my good old 80gig hd - my system doesn't even recognize that anymore, its not even in the bios listingalso, it is not picking up the ethernet card so i cant even connect to the internet - so im so frustrated i don't know what to doany advice adn where to start?im using my wifes computer now, butwhat should i download firstthanksbsciao!Brian S

don't download anything.This is a hardware problem, not software.First disconnect the disk and see what happens.If everything is back to normal you probably connected it incorrectly.The smaller than expected formatted size may be related to the filesystem chosen.Did you format to FAT32 or NTFS?

ntfs ciao!Brian S

well things are looking upi installed a new sata cable on my old 80gig hd and viola! everything works nownow, there is still the issue of having a WD 250g hd and only 140g available - I'm not sure how this is happening, but... maybe someone can shed some light on this.I don't want to start throwing stuff on my new hd until i'm sure its the way i want it - i might have to reformat it.also, how do i change the hard drive letters, my new 250 is H and my old one is I - I want it to be C and E or something like thatthanksciao!Brian S

take a look at this pic, how do I use up that other unallocated space.ciao!Brian S

First of all, I assume you are on either XP SP2 or Vista.. one of the two, correct?One question.. you never said what OS you were running or if you were on XP SP2. If this happens to be XP SP1a, you CANT have a partition greater than 128GB and have it remain stable! LBA is not supported without a hack in SP1 so as long as you are on XP SP2 or Vista, your fine to have a partition or drive larger than 128GB.Regardless, what happened is normal. Windows defaulted to its 128GB partition limit, or, your disk prep software did during install.. one of the two. You have your choice.. if you want to use it as a partition, simply right click on the unallocated drive area showing and select FORMATIf you want all the space for the entire drive (which is what I would do and never format a Windows or FSX install drive) is use 3rd party DISK MANAGEMENT software such as Acronis Disk Director to MERGE the space into the first partition, creating one entire drive partition, H

i bought DDS10 and now i can resize it and get 233G - so all is goodwindows also gives it local disk H: - I want it C: - so once again i fire up DDS10 and change letter to C: it does its thing - it seems to work - it shows it being C:but now, when I try to boot up, it hangs halfway and doesn't come to the desktop and I tried to change it back to H: and still no goam I gong to have to reformat it again? and just leave the letter to whatever windows assigns it? or anything else I can do? and yes it is windows xp sp2 - sorry, I'm so frustrated I can't think straightciao!Brian S

Hi,You're trying to call it "C:" but it's not the drive containing your XP-SP2 installation right? ...and XP is on the drive called "I:"? Windows really isn't happy if it's not on the drive called "C:" if a drive of that letter exists - usually it tries to call the drive "C:" when it installs...I suggest you try disconnceting the new drive, and if possible, convert the XP disk to "C:" and then see if you can get the new disk working as "D:" etc...Geoff

Windows doesn't really care what drive it's on, as long as the drive letter doesn't change after installation.Of the 4 machines I've running Windows it's installed on drives other than C: on 2 of those.

im gong to get a full version of xp and then reinstall all over again, now at least this time i know what NOT to dociao!Brian S

PROBLEM RESOLVEDciao!Brian S