I do not know what to look for in the bios setting. Is there something I need to type in to determine if this machine is capable of supporting this hard drive

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Go into the BIOS and find something that says something like "Standard CMOS Features". If you can't find it, try all choices till you see a list of the IDE Devices connected to your system. Highlight the drive, and press enter. It will tell you if LBA is enabled or not. It may even have it to the right of the model number (some BIOSes are different so it's hard to tell the right procedure for detecting this). If the size in the BIOS is correct, it's probably the operating system that's the problem. Make sure Jesus is your Saviour!

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I had a look but I am not very sure what I am looking at. I didn't see anythiny in perticular of interest, that said LBA. I am told by my IT department at my work that MAYBE this machine does not support 48 bit LBA. However said that i do see in the bios screen that this is indeed a Western Digital 250 gig hard drive.

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Great, that's all you need. By it showing the correct capacity in the BIOS, it shows that it does support 48-bit LBA, and also that the problem is with the operating system. Your problem is the same problem people have if they don't have atleast SP2 installed. You said that it is installed, but are you sure? Make sure Jesus is your Saviour!

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I do have SP2 installed. I think that I may need to flash my bios out. But I am not 100% sure. Maybe I may need to contact the dell people regarding if this model i have can support this type of hard drive.

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Ok, I'm just making sure. It doesn't seem neccessary to flash the BIOS, but it's worth a try I guess. Be careful though, flashing the BIOS is dangerous and can render your computer useless if carelessly done. Personally, I would re-apply SP2 if it was installed after the OS is installed, or upgrade to SP3. Make sure Jesus is your Saviour!

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Well I do have SP2 installed. I am starting to believe that this machine can not accept this 250 Gig hard dive. My friends who I work with that is the IT department has told me the all these Pc come with a 20gig to maximum 40gig hard drive and no greater when this when first purchased. i don't think no one has estimated on the hard drives being installed greater that 130 gig as we are connected up to a main server. Some PC don't even have a hard drive in them. I will email dell my PC information to see if they can confirm that this has 48 bit LBA and if the flashing the bios would help me out here.

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Check Dell's Website for BIOS updates. It usually shows what each update fixes. If it shows anything concerning Hard Disk Capacity or LBA, give it a shot. GX260s are fairly modern PCs, so I don't understand why the BIOS wouldn't support a 250GB drive. If the BIOS reports a capacity of 250GB, then it does support it (I say that from experience). In that case, it would be the OS as I said earlier. Make sure Jesus is your Saviour!

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Well, according to Dell's Website, they don't have any BIOS updates available. This page shows someone who had a 300GB drive installed on his GX260. That shows that it can be done. The 6th reply here: http://forums.microsoft.com/Windows... Make sure Jesus is your Saviour!

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The dell website had just one update for this my dell pc. I tried this new bios (A09)update. I executed this and very little difference happened. I looked back into the control panel and, then went to admin tools Computer Management Disk Manager I was not able to see any unused partition.

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Is the drive formatted with NTFS? Make sure Jesus is your Saviour! Use CN often? Download CNNotify.

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I now just downloaded this link to help me work out if my PC has 48 bit lba. It said yes and i have a good bill of health with SP2 installed. http://www.48bitlba.com/enablebiglb... Having said that I'm still can not seeing this in my PC. It show that I have a WD2500JB hard drive installed but again only 127 gig total size and 120 gig is the free space. Or am I seeing something different here? Would this be 7gigs that I have used up. Shouldn't I be viewing 250 gig? Or have I setup something incorrect when I first installed this hard drive.

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Is the drive formatted with NTFS? Make sure Jesus is your Saviour! Use CN often? Download CNNotify.

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Found it. Yes. It is NTFS formated.

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Wow I've never seen anything like this. Can you try the drive in another PC? Make sure Jesus is your Saviour! Use CN often? Download CNNotify.

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Are you sure that 127 GB is the TOTAL size and not just the part of the hard drive which has been formatted ? It is possible that the drive was partitioned or that only 127 GB was formatted, though I'm not sure how that would have happened. It could have happened if you installed XP and windows partitioned the drive for you.

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I can but the other PC I have is a Pentium 3 and may not be as good as the PC i am using now, which is a series 4. What I can do is take it to my work where I use a similar PC GX270 series and try it there. Should I have a similar problems there then I will give my hard drive to my IT department to figure this one out. OK until tomorrow. Thanks for that. I shall let you know.

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Mr kx5m2g May have a good point because when I installed this new hard drive I used my Window XP1 disc to setup and install the system. I latter went to the Microsoft web site to download the SP2 files needed with he rest of my updates. I am just wondering if this is the case where only 130 gig has been formatted.

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You can use a program like Partition Magic to see if there is 120 GB of unallocated, unformatted hard drive space. If you don't want to spend the money for Partition Magic(I always manage to get it for free with rebates), there are other free programs you can download which would probably do a similar job. If you have a Windows 98 bootable CD or DOS bootable floppy, you could run fdisk to see what the total amount of space is.

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I shall try this right now. i do have a boot disc of Windows 98 and yes I am very familiar in using fdisk to veiw my partitions. Easy done. I should be good at this by now. I have had extensive experience on formatting Windows 98SE on a lot of hard drives. Just view my forum and get a good laugh that's on the Windows 98se.... Out of memory forumhttp://www.computing.net/answers/windows-95/out-of-memory/169940.html I think i hold the record there and I am still posted in on the main page. I stand out at 134 messages.

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FYI I used this Windows 98 boot disk to view my capacity. What I seen has confusted me. My hard drive is 100% formated to NTFS and it say 65 gig total 40 gig free space.

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I don't think DOS supports hard drives that are 250GB does it? Make sure Jesus is your Saviour! Use CN often? Download CNNotify.

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I guess it doesn't. I think the FAT32 stopped somewhere around the 60 gig mark if I recall. Possibly it can't see past that figure.

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My idea is to uninstall and reinstall SP2 or move to SP3. I know it's time consuming, but it could reset something. Make sure Jesus is your Saviour! Use CN often? Download CNNotify.

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I guess I was wrong about using a Windows 98 bootable CD. Partition Magic would certainly work. Maybe Rayburn's idea would work, but I would want to see if your whole hard drive is formatted first before uninstalling and reinstalling SP2 or moving to SP3. Maybe you could try http://www.filehippo.com/download_e... or http://www.filehippo.com/download_s... Also, you could try the diagnostic tools from Western Digital.

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Actually, you can just go to Administrative Tools-...-Disk Management-that should show if your hard drive has unallocated space.

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I did go there and all I see is the model of the hard drive but that is about it. There is no unallocated space.

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So if you highlight the drive, which should read something like Disc 0, it only shows about 127 GB, and there are no other drives or partitions showing ?

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It is pretty much blank.

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