PC Will not shutdown - just restarts

Yeah - that's exactly the problem, Windows doesn't show the missing GB. I'm wondering if the Western Digital utilities will do it - not clear from their website. Otherwise I could try the free trial version of Acronis Diskdirector - presumably my problem is exactly the sort of think it deals with? Again, the web site wasn't clear to me. And yes, the data I may need is archived to external HDD (and DVD) so looking to wipe the disk clean and start capturing some of those camcorder videos I've been meaning to for the past umpteen years. Cheers

Just to close this off. I installed WD Data Lifeguard Tools 11.2 and used the new drive setup utility. So I now have best part of 250 Gb for videos. Thanks for all your help. Feel free to mark this as resolved. Regards, Mike

If you have two partitions for example, and only one is formatted, I'm not sure if
windows would show the missing GB on the HD in MyComputer.

Each partition is seen as a separate drive letter with a disk size as set up when the partitions were created, regardless the file system used to format it. If there are no changes to the partitions, there would be no missing Gb. It is still in another partition - whether formatted or not, FAT32 or NTFS.

Abydos is exactly right about backing up any data before reformatting. BTW, you are not asking about reformatting the boot drive/partition, right?

C: drive = 1 physical drive = boot drive (one partition only) F: drive = 1 seperate physical drive = the one I was talking about = now fully available for data having taken the action described previously. (1 partition only) Cheers, Mike

If you have two partitions for example, and only one is formatted, I'm not sure if
windows would show the missing GB on the HD in MyComputer.

Each partition is seen as a separate drive letter with a disk size as set up when the partitions were created, regardless the file system used to format it. If there are no changes to the partitions, there would be no missing Gb. It is still in another partition - whether formatted or not, FAT32 or NTFS.

Abydos is exactly right about backing up any data before reformatting. BTW, you are not asking about reformatting the boot drive/partition, right?

I should have made myself clearer on that one.

If the remaining missing GB's wasn't allocated to a partition, like during windows installation or FDISK (Partition managers)
It wouldn't show up as a partition………….

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Good you got it solved Mike

Regards Abydos

And I just remembered, when I used the WD tool on the F: drive it produced a message to say that the drive was not set up to be used past 137 gb (or something around that level) - I clicked the appropriate button, a setting was changed, rebooted the pc and voila. I guess this problem was caused by it not being set up correctly to begin with. Just wanted to mention it here in case someone else had the same problem. Regards, Mike

Ha! Well that's an ancient problem - often forgotten until it sneaks up again. 137 is the magic number. Entering the following in Google: 137 LBA will get you a 1/3 million hits of history on that.