I have a Maxtor 300 GB hard drive that I formatted, installed Vista, and
later decided the support just wasn't there for even basic drivers that I
needed and went back to Windows XP. Unfortunately I have not been able to
get any use out of this drive afterward as it is now only showing 31.49GB no
matter what I do, be it formatting or anything. Luckily I had a backup 120MB
Maxtor hard drive that I am operating from now. The problem is, back in XP,
both drives show up in BIOS, Device manager, and My computer manager, however
in all three, the 300GB device that I had installed Vista on still only shows
31.49GB and I cannot figure out how to get full use out of it again. I've
tried all different utilities, low level formats, complete formats, yet
nothing increases the amount of space on the hard drive. I've tried
installing OS (both Vista and XP) on the culprit drive and they both only
show 31.4GB.

Is it possible that the installation of Vista has permanently ruined the
hard drive?