Reference number: CHSIZE

Unable to see full amount of hard drive.

Issue:

Unable to see full amount of hard drive.

Cause:

Before explaining causes why a hard disk drive may not be detected fully it is important to know that once setup it will not reach its full capacity. For example, if a 6 gig hard disk drive is installed in the computer it may only see 5.9 GIG. If, however, a large portion of the hard drive is not being detected or seen, it is likely you may be experiencing any of the below possibilities.

1. Limitation
2. CMOS not setup properly
3. Software / setup issue
4. BIOS issue / limitation - hardware issue

Solution:

Limitations

It is possible that the hard disk drive may not be seen because of a known limitation with the hardware or software. Below is a listing of known limitations and additional information / fixes about each of them. If you are not encountering any of the below issues, continue reading the other possible causes.

Reference	Issue / Question
CH000032	Only able to see 2 Gig partition/drive.
CH000182	Hard disk drive is only being seen as a 504/540MB hard disk drive.
CH000273	Not able to see over 8.4GB hard drive.
CH000274	Not able to see or boot with hard drive over 33.8GB.

CMOS not setup properly

Verify that the hard disk drive is properly setup in CMOS. 

• If the computer has the option for 'Auto' or 'Auto Detect', the computer should be setting up the hard drive properly
• If the computer does not have one of the above options you will need to manually set the CMOS settings for the hard disk drive.

Additional information about CMOS and how to enter it can be found on our CMOS page.

Several hard disk drive CMOS settings can be found on our hard disk drive specifications page.

Software / setup issue

Ensure that you are not encountering a software related issue by deleting and recreating the partitions using fdisk. This will erase all information currently on the hard disk drive but will allow you to ensure that you are encountering other issues.

When recreating the partition ensure that no other partitions are present by choosing option 4 to display the partition information. If no partitions are present, ensure that when creating a primary partition that you use the full amount (100%) unless you wish to have more than one partition.

Once you have created the partition, view that partition and ensure it is being detected 100% and ensure that the Mbytes is correctly stated.

Additional information and help about fdisk can be found on our fdisk page.

BIOS issue / limitation - hardware issue

If you have followed the above recommendations and are still encountering the same issue, unfortunately it is likely you may have a BIOS issue / limitation and/or that you are encountering a hardware issue.

If you have an older computer it is likely that your BIOS may not support the hard disk drive that you are attempting to install into the computer. To resolve this issue, either a BIOS update that updates the BIOS to support a larger hard disk drive will need to be installed, or many hard disk drives include a diskette which contains a Disk Drive Overlay (DDO) software that can be used to trick the computer into recognizing the full amount of the available space on the hard drive.

If your computer is a relatively new computer it is possible that the hard disk drive may have a physical defect at it is recommended that if all of the above solutions have been tried that you contact the manufacturer of the hard disk drive.