I Need some help
I had gotten a 160gb HD from my mom.  It was 160 at the time.  I then erased all the files and deleted the partition and thats when it happened.  It gave up 30gb.  So now I have a 127gb HD.  I did the same thing with my 80gb HD and this did not happen.
I have:
Windows XP Professional
2.1gHz
AMD Athlon 2600+
ATI Radeon 9200se 128mb
Please Help.How did you delete the partition ? ?
It's possible that HDD has a hidden 30G partition on it especially if it's from an OEM machine, Dell HP etc...
If you want to get the full drive back RUN FDisk on it from a boot floppy which will show hidden partitions...just delete the hidden, create a new one using 100% of the drive space and you should be good to go.If you are running XP without SP2, that can happen. You can still create another partition in the free space area and use the space for storage (a handy thing to keep your data safe when you have to format your C drive to reinstall Windows) or slipstream an SP2 and start anew. The drive space is still available. It's just how you want to do it. (Personally, I would never do one big partition.)It's also possible that you took an NTFS hard drive and formatted in FAT32.  FAT32 systems will not recognize drives larger than about 130 GB without some sort of BIOS overlay program.  Check your device properties and it will tell you if it's FAT32 or not.

If this is your problem, go to the website for the MANUFACTURER and download the BIOS overlay program.

Note that 80 GB hard drives would not have this problem.

Dell160 GB (Metric) = 149.01 (Binary)

If you don't have the Service Pack it won't see the rest.

Why not slipstream your XP CD with SP2 and do a clean install, then make a drive image?

SLIPSTREAM
Windows XP without Service Pack 1 can only recognize and format hard drives up to 127GB.

Download a file from the manufacturer of the hard drive that will let you make a bootable floppy or CD for formatting the full capacity of the hard drive.

To install Windows XP on the hard drive. Select "make no changes to the file system" when the SETUP wants to format the drive. After installing XP, install Service Pack 1 and the drive will be recognized at it's full capicity.

To use the drive as an extra drive for storage, formatting with the manufacturer's disk and installing SP 1 should do the trick.Windows XP Service Pack 1a (SP1a)Thanks, I do believe #3 is correct, but right now I am having some other PROBLEMS... guess it comes with a custom made computer sometimes :-/  Once I fix these other problems I will be sure to get back and give the conclusion.  Thank you for answering so promptly.It is a pleasure Matthew. I hope that you have a good Festive Season.