Hello all. After following a friend's advice to low level format my hard drive (since it was appering to be 72Gb instead of the real 80Gb....it's a seagate st380011a)...I now have an even smaller hdd! now it's become something like 30Gb! I downloaded the write zeros thingy from seagate...and by the way...in that utility it says it's 80Gb but my bios says 30Gb (moreorless)....also recognized as that when using the windows xp install cd (complete with format at begining) How do I get it back up to the 80Gb size? If before it was 72Gb total instead of 80Gb is that point to a virus hidden in there? TIA all! please help me!

Ohhhh! .....and checked the jumpers and are in the correct position. TIA

HDD manufacturer's falsely advertise the size of their drives. They base everything on 1000, when really it should be 1024. Stick with me while I run thru the math. These are the actual numbers: 1MB = 1024 bytes 1GB = 1024 MB So a true GB = 1024 x 1024 = 1,048,576 bytes But when manufacturer's rate the drives, they use 1000: 1MB = 1000 bytes 1GB = 1000 MB So their GB = 1000 x 1000 = 1,000,000 bytes Here's how to figure the true capacity of your HDD. You have an 80GB drive, so in manufacturer's terms, that means: 80 x 1,000,000 = 80,000,000 bytes But if you divide that number by 1,048,576 you'll get the true capacity... 80,000,000 / 1,048,576 = 76.29 GB Hellz Yea!

Hi Jam Thanx for helping! So that means my friend is a knucklehead for having me go to all the trouble of low level formatting my drive! So that also means that I am one too since now it has become a 32Gb more or less!!! How can I restore it to original capacity??? Did I destroy the HDD??? TIA!

Basically, if you take the advertised capacity & multiply by 0.95, that will get you close to the true capacity Hellz Yea!

Sorry, I was watching American Idol, got distracted & didn't click "confirm"...I see that you posted in between. When you formatted the drive, did you go with NTFS or FAT32? If you went with FAT32, that's probably your problem http://tools.supportforyourpc.com/get_article.asp?aid=1043 Hellz Yea!

I downloaded from seagate DiscWizard Starter Edition and from the options chose to write zeros erase the entire drive.....then after a whole day (no kiddin) it finished doing that and then in another option asked to prepare it for windows etc and there I chose format for win xp with sp1 and NTFS and use whole disk (which there was reflected correctly as about 80Gb!!) In my bios or when using as slave in another pc etc it always shows (hdd) as being about 30 something Gbs instead of the about 80 Gb. If I reuse that seagate program it sees it as being an 80Gb but I redo everything and still have a 30 something Gb drive in the end