After formatting, computer not recognizing all of memory

I recently formatted my computer (I've successfully done this 2 other times).  But this time when I did it my computer is only recognized 8MB of some 54,000MB that it said it was reformatting.  I discovered this when trying to re-install items and it said there was not enough memory.  So I right clicked on the c: drive and went to properties and it says the total about of space is 8MB.  What did I do wrong along the way to make it do this?  I tried re-doing everying again, but it still only shows 8MB.  I deleted the partition, and created an new one with the full 54,000MB and formatted it NTFS style.  What should I do now to fix this problem?