i have TWO maxtor HARD drives that my operating system does not detect the full capacity of.  one is a 250GB and one is a 60GB.  Both are detected as being 34GB the jumpers are set CORRECTLY.  could it be a problem with the CMOS? I was RUNNING windows xp but have just changed to linux red hat.  I figured that once i changed operating systems that this problem would be corrected but it was not.  could it be the bios?  i am running:

AMD athlon 64 3000+
DFI lanparty nF3 250GB motherboard
1 gig ram

any help would be greatly appreciated.
If your operating system is XP, then upgrade to at least SP1. That should've settle the problem as it did with mine. But since you use Linux.... After checking your motherboard spec it could be that the maximum drive the cmos or bios can recognize is 132gb and it may be lower, please have a look at this site:-
http://www.dfi.com.tw/Upload/Manual/nvraid%20manual.pdf
as the raid drives shown are all in the 30 to 60 gb range.
a bios update may resolve this but they are only showing the last 4, dut there are a few driver updates that are available which also could help.
http://www.dfi.com.tw/Support/Download