I was trying to wipe a hard drive clean, reformat( for NTFS),when I noticed the computer showed capacity to be 32G. It is a Samsung SP8004H 80G hard drive. There are settings for capacity adjustments ( for 32G), I have confirmed the jumpers are correct for the 80G capacity, but it still shows 32G. I checked the partition, it shows a 32G capacity also. Anyone have any Ideas?

What is the BIOS date of your computer or the one that you are trying to format the drive on? Earlier bioses have a 32G limitation, this may be what is affecting you.

Also, some drives have a limiting jumper, that will restrict the drive to 32G if it is on.

The BIOS will handle drives larger than 32G, the jumpers settings are set for larger than 32G. Is there a way to erase the MBR to make the unit like start fresh? This drive was in use before, reading 80G capacity on the same computer. I was trying to reformat the drive to do a fresh reinstall of windows.

Do you have windows running on a machine you can hook this drive up as a slave?


if so hook it up as slave and go here

start run type compmgmt.msc /s return

and see what the disk management says if the drive is a slave, ou should be able to see the whole drive and repartition it, and reformat it to NTFS.

If not get the drive manfacturers diagnostics program and see if there is a problem.

I tried hooking it up to another machine (with windows installed), as a slave. It showed up as a 32G drive. I did download the diagnostic from the manufacturer it shows it as a 32G configuration. I triple checked the jumpers, they are configured for 80G. I'm guessing that there must be a problem with the drive.