20 gig hard drive only 7 gig found

is it running as a master or slave at the mo

if its running on xp you may need to format it as an NTFS file system

i had oroblems similiar to this the only way i could acess was to buy a usb 2---ide adaptor cable

i think its master but not 100% on that but there is 2 hard drives in there but only one hooked up

that was your old mobo m8 you had no problems once the mobo and processer were replaced

try using fdisk and delete any old FAT partitions on the hard drive, then create a new partition and reformat, it may sort it

@ damage check the jumpers at the rear of the hd if its first in the chain make sure its master

i formatted the 7 gig partition to NTFS but it would not let me use the 13 gig partition so i did not get the option to format it but wish i had taken the time to see what info was reported about the the 13 gig partition

so maybe 1 part is NTFS and the other is FAT im not sure if the both work togeather can you format the whole drive as NTFS

yes its master m8

Damage
I'd have a look at the drive via FDisk and see what that says, if it sees the 7gig & the 13gig partitions on there, then it's most likely not initalised in XP. You'll need to goto the disk manager in XP, adminisrative tools, computer management, disk manager. What does that show you for the drive? It should show the drive 0, as having two partitions on it, a 7gig and a 13gig, by the way you didn't have it set up a dynamic disk previously, did you? If you can see the two partitions, right click on the 13gig and initalise,then format it. You should then have acess to it.....
It doesn't matter what format you use NTFS or FAT, XP will happily work with either, you can have multiple drives with different file systems if you want, although I always use NTFS now. It's only legacy win9x that won't see NTFS.
Just one further thought, it may well be the 13gig partition is an extended partition, I don't think you can install XP on one of those, it has to be a primary partition.
Hope this helps...

thx this is my old system allroad lol not the one with the new mobo lol

lone.gunman its shows up as backup fat 32 status healthy unknown partition i have the option to delete the logical drive so if i do that then i guess that when i go back after i delete i should then get the option to format is that correct ?

Hmm,,, yes mate, I think I'd do that then, if you delete the partition then make a new one, I assume there's no data on the drive you want?

Just reading that again, it's a logical drive in an extended partition, right? Thats why it won't let you install XP on it....So the new partition you make I'd do as a primary if it gives you that option.

its just a old drive m8 the data is not good to me as i don't know what the fook it is lol would i be better off with FDisk and format or do it through windows i have got partition magic but never used it before only get it today at pc world lol

stick it in your machine as a second drive and delete partitions that way lot quicker plus XP is better for checking drives.

Just do it in the disk manager in XP m8y, that'll do the job just fine

thx guys its only a backup pc that i am just brushing the cobwebs off and will stick it on a network when i get it all sorted so i guess which way i do it don't matter to much as if it goes tits up just have to reformat again lol

got it all back now thanks for the help used partition magic nice piece of kit to have