Question : Problem: XP System reports 1Gig HD on an 80Gig Partition

I have a 2GHz Compaq EVO, with a Gig of RAM and running winXP pro and NTFS File System.  I had a problem with the OS crashing, so I reinstalled the OS (Repaired system) and when it came back up, I had to reinstall DiskKeeper.  After a couple of days, I noticed that I was getting an error that I was running low on Disk space.  Turns out, its reporting that my 80Gig HD is only 1 Gig.  At first I thought, OK, lets reinstall the OS, but I still get the same problem.  HD sounded a bit funny, so I thought I would replace that with a 160GB HD, but still having the same problem (copied over OS with Partition Magic).  I also tried upgrading DiskKeeper to version 10, but no luck.  The funny thing is that if you go into the Disk Management page, it reports the correct size HD, but once you right click and hit properties, it only shows a 1GB hd, with about 40MB free.  It's actually a 74GB HD, with about 26GB free.  During the Hurricane last year, I lost almost all my install discs (in the office that got destroyed) so I really dont want to wipe out and restore.  Any ideas?

Answer : Problem: XP System reports 1Gig HD on an 80Gig Partition

The fact that both hard drives are corrupted points more to a BIOS problem, especially after you mentioned "bit shifted" which I have never heard of.  Hard to understand how a software bug could infect a new drive also.

I would flash the bios with the latest Compaq version (even if it is the same as what you have).  Then after flashing/updating the BIOS, go back into setup and see what the drive parameters look like.

You are probably going to have to completely reformat the drives, so I hope you have a recent backup of your data or can somehow get the critical data off first.

>> copied over OS with Partition Magic
Do you have a hard drive that you've never used before?  Maybe you copied over the problem onto the new hard drive when using Partition Magic.