just stuck a 2nd 80gb hd into the pc but vista is only recognising it as 30gb, how do you get it to format to the full 80gb?

 

is your bios up to the job?

 

Yep sounds like a bios issue to me as well. If you go into the bios, what does it list the drive as?

 

Also take a look here...

Microsoft Corporation

If you are formatting the drive as fat32 instead of ntfs, then Vista seems to have a 32gb limit on partition sizes. I've no idea why, but personally I'd use ntfs anyway, (it's much more efficient).

 

sorted it, was one of dells bios peculiarities...