Hard Drive Trouble: Solv-ed

[Mozesh]

Hey, so as some of you might know my old hard drive crashed a few weeks back, so now I've bought aÃ,  new one a 160GB maxtor HD. Well I'm happy with it BUT I got aÃ,  problem.
For some reason my PC says it's a 128GB hard drive . Aside of that it works like a charm, my brother says it's because of my older motherboard and that I should bring it back to da shop and get my money back or get aÃ,  120GB HD and get a little money back.
So I'm wondering, is this dangerous in any way for my new HD or my motherboard or whatever if I kept it?
It's not that I am to lazy to go there and get my money back it's that I finally got everything the way I wanted (with backup's and stuff) and then I should format it again.
Thanks! o/
Ralph

EDIT!!!!:
And so 30 minutes later I found my answer: No it can't damage anything you dumbass!
So I will just leave it in there , if I buy a newer motherboard I would get that 30GB back anyways so you moderat0rs out there you can lock this topic if ya want.
Sorry for this useless topic.

[shbaz]

Have you tried to partition the drive into two sections?

Perhaps you could dual-boot Linux and see what it does.. I think there's a version of Knoppix that boots from a CD-ROM.

[Mozesh]

Have you tried to partition the drive into two sections?

No I haven't but it sounds to me like that could work, I might try that.

[mätzyboy]

I had the same problem and had to flash my BIOS to get access to all disk space. That was scary! Had heard lots of stories about people who's computers crashed during the flashing rendering the computer useless. Of course the flashing crashed for me... About 5 times! Luckily none of the crashes was fatal to the BIOS, I guess they stopped before actually altering the BIOS. I had to try different versions of the flashing software before finding the second but newest one to work. Scary stuff I tell you! Be really really careful if you want to try it. Maybe better hand it in to a professional...

Partitioning doesn't give access to all disk space. At least not for me. The BIOS can't understand that there is such a thing as a hard drive bigger than 120 GB, that is considered Sci-fi in its poor little historical brain...

[LGM]

Actually, it's not your motherboard... It's a registry setting in Windows. The Maxtor HD should've come with a disk, MaxBlast. If you install that, it will enable a registry setting or something in Windows to allow explorer to realize there is 20-odd GB more.

You won't get the full 160GB because the bytes on the box are determined by 1000KB = 1MB and 1000mb=1GB whereas Windows calculates bytes as 1024KB=1MB and 1024=MB = 1GB.... Or something to that effect.