If the second drive is disconnected(ide cable and power connectors), the master drive jumper set correctly, the machine rebooted to the Windows does the original drive size return.
If you double click on My Computer(how much free and used space is reported)

Note about drive jumpers- , cable select, master, master w/slave, slave etc are the usual settings.

If the original drive size returned after disconnecting the slave drive, reconnect the slave drive, set the jumpers properly, power up, and load the bios..are both drives set to autodetect ? Does the Bios report the correct drive model number.

You machine has an P3 processor thus its likely to only support IDE/PATA drives...is the new(used) slave drive of the same vintage ?

...winston



"Lee" <Lee@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:7EBB69C8-1BFF-4393-8A29-DFA22AF7F17D@microsoft.com...
:I added a second (used) 40 GB hard drive to my Dell Dimension L500r pc. It
: runs on Windows XP professional. In the process, somehow the original 40 GB
: hard drive shrunk to 3 GB. The added drive also showed only 3 GB, but I was
: able to initialize, partition and format it to show 37 GB. How can I
: restore the lost drive space without losing my operating system?
: --
: Lee