I just got a Western Digital 200 gig drive. After I formatted it, it only shows 128 gigs. That's obviously far less than 200. I've written Western Digital, but haven't heard back yet. Any thoughts?

BIOS Limitation ?? LBA48 Addressing: http://www.48bitlba.com http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303013/en-us

Did you format it using the Western Digital software?

Assuming it isn't a bios limitation (48bitlba) problem. Is this a second drive? Did you use the XP Disk Management to format/partition the drive? If it's your C: drive, boot from the XP CD and use the Recovery Console 'diskpart' command to partition/format the drive. Do yourself a favor BACKUP! Sorry, I do not check for private messages

Apparently it is a BIOS limitation. My motherboard is several years old and there are no new updates for it. I followed Western Digitals instructions and formated with a boot disk. It's up to 187 gigs, which is better than before, but why does it need to hog 13 gigs for itself? Thanks for the responses.

If you have it formatted and showing in windows as 187gb then you are not facing the 48bitLBA limitation in bios. The difference in measurement has been explained many times. Windows measures bites, MBs and GBs in multiples of 1024 units whereas disk makers measure in multiples of 1000. therefore a makers measurement of 200Gb always comes out smaller in windows. EG my 120Gb drive measures only 111 in windows. You've solved your problem and lost nothing of the available space on your new drive I used to have a signature but it disappeared and I just couldn't be bothered writing another so please feel free to ingore this.

Yea, that sounds about right. Many (most) manufacturers calculate a GB as 1000 x 1000 x 1000, when it actually is 1024 x 1024 x 1024. If you care to do the math, take 200 x 1000 x 1000 x 1000 & divide it by 1024 x 1024 x 1024