Boomhower,

did you mean 32 GB difference? (not mb)

Dave T2

This is most likely a matter of what you, the advertiser, and your computer actually MEAN by a Gigabyte.

Technically, a Gigabyte is 1024 x 1024 x 1024, which is 1,073,741,824 Bytes. That is what you computer thinks is a Gigabyte since it is working in base 2, not base 10.

What you will almost indoubtedly find, SOMEWHERE, in very small print on the HD box is that the manufacturer considers a Gigabyte to be only 1,000,000,000 bytes. If you multiply that by 160, you get 160,000,000,000.

If you multiply the number your computer thinks is a Gigabyte, 1,073,741,824 by 128, you will get 137,438,953,472. The difference between this last number and 160,000,000,000 is taken up in formatting overhead. The format process actually writes data to your drive. In this case, about 22,561,046,528 Bytes is used to write the proper format to your drive, along with other overhead files used by the very inefficient operating system..

Part of this is understandable, once you realize that writing a format actually writes data to a drive.

The part about the difference between what your computer thinks is a Gigabyte and what the manufacturer TELLS you is a Gigabyte; well, call it fraudulent, call it whatever you want, but they "told" you in tiny print, written by some lawyer who doesn't like you, so they are covered.

So much for truth in advertising. What you bought only has a NET usable 137,438,953,472 bytes on your drive, as far as the COMPUTER is concerned.

Same thing happened when I installed a 300GB drive. You'll need the Service Pack 2, as I recall.

My 160GB drive shows as having 149GibiBytes (the supposedly-official way of talking about binary GB).

If yours is showing only 128, there's something else happening here. There is a BIOS barrier at 137GB in older motherboards, but that apparently is not a factor here.

Have you tried Seagate's FAQ. Lots of info on their website.

Your problem is likely that your host system currently does not support 48bit LBA (Logical Block Addressing) as presently configured. This can generally be addressed succesfully without too much trouble, but you have to endure a little geek-speak to do so. There's lots of info on the net about resolving this, but here's a link to the 'horse's mouth' version:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303013/en-us

(Basically, drive, OS, BIOS and Registry all have to be in order for this to work.)

When i added my 160GB and 180GB drives i had to also add a new IDE controller card. The bios on my motherboard didn't support anything over 127GB. I got a Promise PCI RAID card for about $10 somewhere and that took care of the problem. It also added another 4 IDE connections so i can have up to 16 IDE devices now. Or, i could if i had a 1000 watt power supply. ;)

LOL .... Indeed.....GB it is!

Now what am I going to do with all those 4.7 MB DVD blanks I just bought!? :-)

I had the same experience 2 weeks ago with a 300 GB Seagate.

I jumped it wrong, as "Cable Selecr" in the middle cornector of the IDEcable with another disc in the end as master.

I then removed the jumper and now it was recognized as "Slave". That solved my problem.

Rune

Registry fix here:

http://tinyurl.com/gw5a

Duncan

I think it may have to do with my current Promise Ultra66 ATA Raid card... Even with the most recent BIOS update to the card, it still sees it as only 131GB. Have done all of the hacks to the registry and what not to get the rest of the drive seen - no such luck...

I just won a Promise Ultra100 ATA PCI card on ebay for $10.00 that should resolve the issue - go figure..