I recently built my first computer and loaded windows 98. I missed the part where Windows setup ask about formating my new hard drive for large capacity. Needless to say my computer only see 1.99gigs of my 20 gig hard drive. I went into dos and started messing around and ended up partitioning it (I know just enough of dos to make me dangerous to myself). I hate partitions but I could live with it if the new partition wasn't just 959 megs. I figured I proobably changed it when I was fdisking. Help.
Posted by Glenn Taylor (Member # 162) on :
Laura,
Your hard-drive should have come with software for formating large capacity drives. If you don't have it, just go to the manufacturer's website and download it for free.
[ November 24, 2001: Message edited by: Glenn Taylor ]
Posted by David Wright (Member # 111) on :
Laura, I assume you don't want to Fdisk and re-do the whole thing due to the time you put into setting it up?
There are programs such as Partition Magic that will let you resize partitions without losing your present information.
With one partition about a gig in size you could just use that for certain data and don't load programs on it.
Posted by old paint (Member # 549) on :
you got a problem with the mother board...what processor are you running? if you got an older m/b with an old bios it wont see anything biger then 2 or 4 gig, some older bios wont see any h/d bigger then 512 megs....you need to be more detailed in your question....as for dos fdisk and format...your windows start disk should have those on it.....if you dont you need to make one...
Posted by Laura Butler (Member # 1830) on :
I just built this computer, so everything is brand new. I called the company where I got most of the hardware and talked with the tech on Fri. He was the one that told me exactly what I did wrong. He told me to go back and re-load windows. But that didn't give me the option again to format for a large capacity harddrive. I was hoping that I could fix it before Monday so I wouldn't have to call him back. I don't know with the software Partition Magic would work as not all the harddrive got formatted the first time. Thats why I need to find someone that knows their way around dos. I HATE partition and would rather straighten it out there. Besides, my computer thinks that C: dir is only 1.99 meg and D: is only 1 gig.
[ November 24, 2001: Message edited by: Laura Butler ]
Posted by old paint (Member # 549) on :
again i ask...what is motherboard, what is the cpu, you say you built this computer....then you should have the name and type of mother board, the speed of the cpu....or are you saying that you built this computer from an old motherboard, added ram and a new hard drive?????
Posted by dveenema (Member # 833) on :
There's only one way; put in your windows boot disk, run fdisk, enable large disk support, delete your existing partition, create new partition (100% of drive), set partition as active, restart, then format c and reload windows.
Posted by Jim Upchurch (Member # 209) on :
One thing I would add is to make sure your hard drive setting in the bios is set correctly. It should be set to LBA. The bios should have a hard drive detection setting and give you the option there. Windows won't see it if the bios doesn't.
Posted by Laura Butler (Member # 1830) on :
Thanks for everyone's help. I should be able to do it from here. Old Paint I bought a ECS motherboard with a AMD 1.2 Thunderbird. The board was really cheap ($79 but you can find them for $64 on the net). EliteGroup (ECS) has a board that is way underrated (k7S5A) and gets high reviews from some board rating web sites. So far so good for me.
Posted by Bob Rochon (Member # 30) on :
Laura,
Just want to reinforce the two posts about checking the Bios to see if that reads the correct size of the Hard drive. If that is wron then it doesn't matter what you use it will be wrong.
Next, I would then fdisk the drive, and reformat.
When you fdisk it will then ask you if you want to use all of the HD space on one partition. This is where you want to say yes.
Load windows when you are done formatting and then check your drive specs. Don't worry if it is not exact for Windows sometimes reads a little under what the drive says you have. This is OK.
A good indicator is to watch the formatting process in DOS, if a 30 GIG HD takes 40 seconds to format 100% then don't waste your time loading windows.
If my memory is correct you can view your partition as well after you create it to also double check that fdisk did it's job.
It's been a while since I've had this problem so don't shoot me If I left something out.
Posted by Mike Pipes (Member # 1573) on :
quote:Originally posted by dveenema: There's only one way; put in your windows boot disk, run fdisk, enable large disk support, delete your existing partition, create new partition (100% of drive), set partition as active, restart, then format c and reload windows.
Dennis is right on this one.
There's just no other way around it and if it's a new motherboard and BIOS it's not gonna have any problems reading a larger drive - not when the average drive sold with a new system is now 30 Gigs.
Go back into FDISK and start over. Wipe the drive, setup one primary partition and set it to take the entire drive.
Format the drive, load Win98. It's been a while since I've loaded Win98 but if anywhere along the way it gives you the choice the make the drive Fat32, go ahead and do that as well.
Posted by Bill Biggs (Member # 18) on :
I agree 100% with Mike and Dennis, also check the bios first it has to be set right or forget it. Bill
Posted by Shane French (Member # 2098) on :
Or she can download 'The Partition Resizer' from download.com or one of the similar applications that allow you to resize partitions.
