so bummed (hard drive)

[aimeekitty]

I installed my new hard drive but it shows up as 31 gigs, not 120 gigs WTF?

someone please help. I so sad. 31 is better than 20... but. :(

the troubleshooting says that some "older" computers arent compatible with newer drives and will only show 32 gig, 64 gig, etc, instead of the full capacity. and that I might have to upgrade my bios. Well uh. (1) what's a bios. (2) I searched apples website and couldnt find anything about bios upgrades to download, etc.

they also said I could use the tool cd to set up an "overlay" on the drive to support it's full capacity? uh? huh? is that wise?

:( I'm wondering whether I can fix this, or whether I should take the whole thing back and just deal with my tiny 20 gig hard drive. :(
maybe I should break down and finally replace my computer. it is kinda old but... :( it's a 500 mhz G4 fyi...

took me so long to back up all my files too. :(

Comments

[euqsam.livejournal.com]

Your Mac should support drives up to 128 gigs without issue. Make sure you have the right drive (Easiest way is to google for the model number that's on the drive) and then consult this article:

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/IDE/add_2nd_drive/

Make sure you've got it installed properly. Also make sure that you've done the format dance correctly. If this doesn't fix things, let me know.

[Found via friends-of-friends, btw.]

[aimeekitty.livejournal.com]

OMG. you saved me. That site in their faq, after a bit of searching I found someone having the EXACT same problem as me. It turns out it was an incorrect jumper setting. the instructions for my western digital drive were a bit LACKING, we'll just put it that way :)

thankyou SO MUCH. you saved me a LOT of trouble.

[euqsam.livejournal.com]

My pleasure. Glad it worked out.