i have a 80 gb drive and it only says it is a 5 gb and i have tried reformatting it several times and also i have tried scanning for errors and it seems not to find anything wrong and i was wondering if there was any way to retrieve the whole 80 gb's back or if the drive could be bad any info would be great thanks mark

right click on "my computer" click manage under Storage, select "disk management" This tool will allow you to see how the space it used on your drive.

Is this 80gb drive on a different computer that is older than the one in your specs, or was it partitioned and formatted on an older computer originally? If not, is that a typo and you should have typed 75gb? If so, the drive manufacturers use the bogus decimal size for hard drives - e.g. 1 gb = 1,000,000,000 bytes. Windows and probably your computer bios use the binary size e.g. 1 gb = 1,073,741,824 bytes. An 80gb manufacturer's size drive will be seen in Windows as about 75gb binary size, after it has been partitioned and formatted. What size is the drive (NOT the partition on the drive) in Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Mangement - Disk Management ?? What is the size of the partition on the drive there?

yes it's on an older comp. but i tried it on both the one with the specs and the older one with no changes it is saying that it is 2.53 gb;s and it's unallocated,on the drive it self says 80 gigs i used it quite a while back on another comp. and had no problems mark

Once you make a partition on a hard drive it does not magically change size when you move it to another computer. If all you do is re-format it, the partition is not going to get any bigger or smaller. Many older computers have a buggy bios version that cannot recognize an 80gb drive properly - they will see it as 8gb, or 32gb, or 64gb, or they will subtract 32gb or 64gb or multiples of 32gb or 64gb from the size of the drive - the bios starts over and starts counting again; or the boot will stall when the hard drive detected is larger than the bios version can handle. Sometimes you can update the bios version of one of an old computer mboard and be able to recognize a hard drive up to 128gb (in Windows; 137gb manufacturer'size), or higher - sometimes there is no new enough bios version available, and the BEST way for your computer to recognize any hard drive size is to get a PCI EIDE hard drive controller card that has 48bit LBA support (almost all do these days) and attach the hard drive to that, but you must be able to boot from a SCSI or a hard drive controller in the boot order in your bios Setup to be able to boot from a hard drive attached to the controller card. Those cards cost as little as $30, or less. You can still use a drive attached to the card for data storage if you can't boot from a SCSI or hard drive controller in your bios Setup. In addition, on any computer, you must use the right method of detecting your hard drive - Normal mode is only for drives 528mb (512mb binary) or smaller. Large mode is only for drives 8.4gb or smaller. Usually you are best off to select Auto detection, by the method Auto or LBA, in order for the bios to properly recognize a drive larger than 8.4gb. Most more recent bioses are set to Auto by Auto by default when the mboard or system is new, or when bios defaults are loaded, or when the mboard battery is removed, or the bios cmos is cleared by means of moving a jumper on the mboard, then moving it back. .... So what do you do now? If depends on whether the computer bios on the mboard you install the 80gb drive on can recognize the full size of the drive. Whatever computer you install it on, make sure the bios Setup is set to Auto detect the drives by the Auto or LBA method. If you want to use it on an older computer, tells us the make and model of the mboard, or the brand name system model number, and we will tell you what your alternatives are. Or, in most cases, you can use a PCI EIDE hard drive controller card (see above). If you want to use it on the computer in your specs, its bios will probably see the full size of the drive fine. What you do next depends on whether you want to install Windows on the 80gb drive and be able to boot it, or not. If you DO want to boot with it...... I recommend you DISCONNECT your other drive(s) that have (a) Windows installation(s) on them if you want the 80gb drive to have normal drive letter assignments, that is, C is the Windows partition, otherwise Setup WILL NOT assign C to the Windows partition on the 80gb drive. Boot the computer with your XP CD (a CD drive must be before a hard drive in the boot order in your bios Setup), continue on to Setup, delete all existing partitions on the 80gb drive, make one or more new ones - if it asks you if you want to enable large hard drive support, answer yes - and format the single or first partition. Then Setup will run it's course. Install the drivers for your mboard, especiaslly the main chipset drivers, after Setup has finished. Etc. etc. etc. If you want to use the 80gb drive only for data storage, then in XP, you go to Disk Management - delete all existing partitions on the 80gb drive, make one or more new ones - if it asks you if you want to enable large hard drive support, answer yes - and format the single or first partition, and partition and format the other partitions(s) if there are more than one.

thanks Tubesandwires for the advice i'll try that and see what happens mark