ThinkCentre S50 8183-TSG 160 gb hard drive reported as 128 gb

[Hans7d]

Hello all. I am a new member of this forum and I am trying to get some questions answered on my  ThinkCentre S50 system.

Since 2007 I have a ThinkCentre S50 8183-TSG that I use for Photoshop, now version CS5. In order to enable Open GL for advanced graphic options and improve general performance I placed 2 GB of RAM and a GE 8400 GS PCI type graphics card. This works just fine.

The system came with two partitions on the hard drive, C and D. Considering the capacity of the drive I wanted to make just one partition of this. I used a program to erase the D partition and take the free space into the C drive but now the 160 gb hard drive is only reported as 128 gb. A search on the Internet indicates that this can be a BIOS limitation, the BIOS version is 2AJT51A which I believe is the latest. I am running Windows XP Home edition, updated to SP3 with all the latest updates for everything.

Can this be solved or do I just have to live with it. I am not in the mood to format the whole thing and reinstall everything again.

Kind regards,

Hans

[Maliha Community Moderator]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

Based on this, your HDD has 149GB actual capacity.

If you go to Disk Management (Right Click on My Computer -> Manage -> Disk Manangement), does the space add up to ~149GB? Do you see any uninitialized drive there?

Let us know.

[Hans7d]

Hello Maliha

Thanks for your reaction. I am aware of the base 2 mathematics issue but that is not the reason here. The disk size is really given as 128 Gb and there are no uninitialized drives. From what I could find on the Internet I think it is a BIOS limitation, the latest update is from 2005 but I believe the basic system design dates from around 2002. This is of course a dated system but it meets my needs for the applications that I use it for.

Kind regards,

Hans

[Maliha Community Moderator]

But based on your system specs, it came with 160GB, I ponder why would lenovo sell you 160GB drive when it's not supported by the BIOS (which I don't believe to be the case).

The issue you're having is explained in following threads:-

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/E-S-series-ThinkCentre-Desktops/S50-8183-K83-unable-to-detect-entire-har...

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/E-S-series-ThinkCentre-Desktops/IBM-S50-8184-640-GB-Sata-Drive/m-p/56098

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/E-S-series-ThinkCentre-Desktops/S50-8184-Hard-drive/m-p/125124 (Just to show drives with bigger capacities work)

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/E-S-series-ThinkCentre-Desktops/Can-S50-BIOS-handle-SATA-DVD-drive-and-P...

[Hans7d]

Hello Maliha

First of all I like to thank you for your support on this matter. 

Based on my system specs, it came indeed with 160GB. I agree that I find it hard to believe that IBM would choose such a solution for a problem that should not be too hard to solve when the system was designed. On the other hand, partitioning it into two drives that are both smaller than 128 Gb would evade problems with the BIOS limitations without changing anything on the basic system configuration.

As I am not an expert on computers I am a bit confused by what I see in the threads that you suggested. I understand that I have to disconnected the DVD drive (PATA) and that Windows then can see the remaining free space? Also when re-connecting it, I will get a Blue Screen of Death during XP startup? Does this also work without having to format the drive which requires a complete re-install?

Again, thanks for your help.

Kind regards,

Hans

[Maliha Community Moderator]

You're welcome

It's possible that the previous owner or the shop you bought it from partitioned the drive incorrectly, because as far as I know old lenovo desktops only came with 1 partition, however I could be wrong too; since my exposure to ThinkCentre is only limited to one desktop at school.

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Hans7d wrote:

As I am not an expert on computers I am a bit confused by what I see in the threads that you suggested. I understand that I have to disconnected the DVD drive (PATA) and that Windows then can see the remaining free space? Also when re-connecting it, I will get a Blue Screen of Death during XP startup? Does this also work without having to format the drive which requires a complete re-install?

Again, thanks for your help.

Kind regards,

Hans

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Yes, it appears from the threads that PATA and SATA drives have issues together on S50, for Bluescreen, you might or might not get it, give it a try.

Let us know how it goes.

[MTyn]

I have had almost same problem with a 80GB HDD with 2 partitions.

After formatting it into 1 primairy partition with the XP setup program and re-install of XP it was solved.

[Hans7d · Accepted solution]

I tried the suggestion to disconnect the DVD drive but as the connectors for the DVD and hard drive are the same this ends in a message: 1962: Can't find OS.

It looks like this cannot be solved without a complete re-install and for the missing 20 Gb this is not worth the trouble.

Thanks for the suggestions so far,

Hans