I bought a cicerio hard drive which maxtor 160 GB. I installed it with partition but each partition showing 31.9 GB total of 127.60 GB so i have missing 32.40 GB. 1) My bios did not detect the hard drive in first place so i use Max blast to install it. 2)Mother board is ECS 865PE-A 2.0 how do fix this problem. I dnon`t know which update i have to install. Please give full detail Thanks Ruban.

XP has a limit on the size it will recognize. You need at least Service Pack 1 to go beyond that limit. MS has SP 2 now, which has SP1 too. How to Obtain the Latest Windows XP Service Pack There is a link there to order it on CD.

Hello, Ruban. To make your life a lot easier, simply save and backup any data on your HD and repartition it using the XP CD. Only, this time, divide the 160GB into two 80GB's, thus working around XP's 120GB limit. Hope this helped! :) Post back if you got any questions. -Andrew

To add to Andy: How to partition and format a hard disk in Windows XP

Be careful!! The problem may be that you have hit the old ATA protocol limit. This limits the maximum hard drive size to 137 GB. To get over this limit you need 48 bit LBA mode working to be supported in: 1. Your Motherboard. 2. Your BIOS 3. Your OS. For your BIOS and Motherboard Check your manuals. For your OS the minimum required is: a. Win2k SP3 or above if using Win2k b. WinXP SP1 or above is using WinXP. Win2k pre SP3 and WinXP Pre SP1 do NOT support 48 Bit LBA mode. Win98 and WinME do NOT support 48 bit LBA mode. If your M/B, BIOS and O/S does support 48 Bit LBA mode working then you will need to enable 48 Bit LBA in your OS. More on this on my website (see below). To learn and understand more on the 137 GB limit, visit my website (Homepage link) and look up the section titled "Working with Large Hard Drives (Barriers and Limits)". It is very important that you understand the issues and deal with them otherwise you risk loosing your valuable data once you go past the 137 GB barrier. You have been warned!! Take steps now to protect your data. Sorry to be alarmist but I have come across too many instances where people have either lost data or had to go through a painfull process to retrieve their data over this specific issue. ___________________________________________ ☺ When everything else fails, read the instructions.