I have a 3TB hard disk and can only access 2TB, I believe I have the latest BIOS (V1.11) with enhanced disk drive specification and running Win7. Why can't I access the last 1TB?

Question

I have a 3TB hard disk and I can only access 2TB. I believe I have the latest BIOS with enhanced disk drive specification and running Windows 7. Why can't I access the last 1TB?

Answer 1

If you can't access all your storage, you should first check if the hard drive has been partitioned. You can do this by entering Control Panel: navigate to Administration Tools and start Computer Management. Then use the tree menu on the left and choose Local Disk Management. On the next page, you will see all your partitions and drives. Check and see if there is a partition with almost 1 TB of space, right click it and choose a letter.

The new drive will appear in your My Computer drives section.

Answer 2

It has a 40gig 4200rpm hd in it now. I would say that it is IDE hookup. You can go with a 5400rpm or 7200rpm, the 7200 runs very hot and uses up brtetay power faster, though the performance gains is very good.As long as you have your origional boot disk that contains all your drivers then you are set. When you first put in the cd take the time to look for the option to partition the hard drive with 15000mb for your Windows xp. Many laptops just partition one partition then load xp then after loading xp you have to go into my computer select your current c:/drive and view its properties and format the other partition from there.PS with a new hard drive don't fall for the laptop asking you during loading the OS, do you want to delete the yada yada yada on this hard drive? There is nothing there and it will lead you down a 15 hour black hole of the laptop searching for something to delete