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Packard Bell - reformat = reduced size

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12 replies

by gwr

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I have a Packard Bell Store & Save 3500 (500GIG) USB 2.0 hard drive.
I found it necessary to reformat (NTFS) it and it now only shows as 74.5 GB.
Has anyone any ideas how I get back the 500 GB ??

Any help much appreciated.

gwr

12 replies

by Former member

With your USB drive plugged in, you might be able to resize it in that section. Or just delete all of the sections on the drive and then do a full format of the drive, this will bring it up to around 470gb, give or take a few gigs.

Please post back if you have any more problems or questions.

by gwr

I am using Windows XP (Home Edition) and I went to 'disk management' and removed partitions and then reformatted to 500GB (NTFS)approx. Appreciate all your help - what a good site this is - many thanks.

All is now well.

by Former member

Please post back if you have any more problems or questions.

by boxfiddler Hot topic

Time for a refit!

Davette

edit: Don't make me chase you all over these boards. :D

by oh smeg

It sounds like you have hit the upper limit that Windows 2000 supports.

Anyway you can either add more partitions or use a different OS to format the drive. XP Pro with SP2 or above should allow you to format all of the drives capacity.

Col

by cowen80194

What age is the Packard bell. Model#
What hard drive is in there. Model#

As I get the information it was 500gig prior to format.

What OS was on it and what are you using now to re place the OS. "Packard Bell resore disks"???

I have worked on Packards for some time.

Did you install the drive or was it with the computer when you got it. Did someone else install it for you?

There may have been a disk imatation going on there.

Lots of information can help diagnose this usually i have someone bring it in so i can put the healing hands on it.

chro4@aol.com and maybe we can work it out or i can get u my cell number and talk it out.

With what you said sounds like it is a missing disk emulator and the bios can not support the higer LBA mode of 500 gig.

by oh smeg

[b]Packard Bell Store & Save 3500 (500GIG) USB 2.0 hard drive.[/b]

Sounds very much like a External HDD Enclosure to me with a 500 GIG HDD inside it made or at the very least marketed by Packard Bell.

I'm not sure how looking at the BIOS will be of any help here as you need to address the limitations of the OS in use before you can do anything else.

Col

by cowen80194

Some limits are in bios.
LBA, heads sectors and LZ, precomp.

I have seen these change on a wim in IBM machines that are using disk managment software and you WILL loose the hard drive.

Or the bios can not see more then 100 gig with out a traslation.

it is all valid in the realm of computer quirks

by astralista

Hi, Do you still use your PB hard drive? If not, can I buy your adapter power lead cable because mine does not work at all, chewed by my cat. If you are still using your hard drive please ignore this. If you are not using it, I'd really like to buy the lead cable coz all my business files are in there.

Thank you,
Chris
Surrey

by older mycroft

Then have a rummage around their Cable display cabinets. If you can't see an exact match, have a chat to whoever is at the components counter at the back of the store.

If I know PackardBell, they'll never have used anything other than a standard interfaced cable, or close enough to one that you can do a Heath-Robinson on what's readily available. ;)

Surrey's a big County, and without knowing your actual location I can't be more precise but Maplin are in Epsom, Kingston-on-Thames, Guildford, and Sutton. Greater London is crawling with them and that is where you'll find the larger stores (like on Edgware Road, W2) with the most stock.

Happy hunting. :)

Edit for locations.

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