A hard drive jumper set incorrectly may limit the size of a hard drive to 33GB (this may also be reported as 32GB).

Both Maxtor and Quantum brand hard drives use a jumper setting which will reduce the drive's capacity. Limiting the drive's capacity can be useful when overcoming BIOS capacity support barriers however, there are other options that should be considered before limiting the drive's capacity.

Maxtor drives use the Cylinder Limitation Jumper setting to limit the drive's capacity. On any Maxtor drive under 33GB the CLJ jumper sets the cylinders to 4092 (2GB). On Maxtor drives larger than 33GB the CLJ will limit the capacity to 33GB (this could also show up as 32GB).

Quantum drives use the Alternate Capacity jumper setting. Using this jumper on drives over 33GB limits the drive capacity to 33GB. On drives smaller than 33GB, there will be no Alternate Capacity jumper.

FAT32 drive format limit from inside Windows 2000 or XP

Another cause for the 32/33GB size could be that the drive was formatted from inside of Windows 2000 or Windows XP as FAT32. 32GB is the limit of the format program built into 2000 or XP when formatting a drive with FAT32. To gain the full capacity in FAT32, the drive will need to be partitioned and formatted from a DOS prompt, outside of Windows. If the NTFS file system is used for the file system format, this problem will not occur.