Hi ! One of my old DOS machine HDD has crashed .I wanted to install new HDD on it , Now the problem is that old HDD was 2GB only new HDD I am trying to install is 80GB. I have DOS 6.20 boot disk with me. Now the problem starts when I boot using boot disk with raw HDD (unformated) it boots with a: . Now when i use fdisk it creats a partition of 2GB(which is more than enough for me on this machine). But after "fdisk" system asks for restart , and real problem starts here it just won't boot . It gets stuck on Starting MS DOS. Pls help!!!!

First of all, DOS doesn't recognize partitions of more than 2GB (2.1GB actually) and won't recognize anything above 8.4GB. Likely it's not DOS giving you your problems, your machine's BIOS probably won't recognize anything beyond a certain limit (and if it's more than just a few of years old, it would never recognize a drive that large). http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HO...

Thanks for your reply. I got HDD detected it is showing 8455mb. Does this mean I can't use this 80GB HDD. Is there some method ican get DOS installed on this machine.B'cos 80 GB is the smallest HDD i can get. And I dont even need more then 500~600 mb to run my applications.

Maybe this will help explain: http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/su... But even if you got it working, you'd be wasting 90% of the drive's space by using MS-DOS (remember, that 8.4GB DOS limit)... Maybe try the refurb HDD market (but they're more expensive than new drives, due to the exact problem you're having)...

As already mentioned, if you're going to use a pre-windows dos then an 80 gig is a waste. Of course you've already got it and it will work. You can make a 2 gig primary and maybe 4 (I'm not sure if there's a limit) 2 gig virtual drives in an extended partition. If you do use that drive in that computer you ought to connect it to an ATA card--assuming the motherboard has PCI slots. Or you could get a smaller drive, probably 8.4 or less since that seems to be the largest your bios will see. There'll be some on ebay. I've got some too. Post back if you plan on keeping the 80 gig with dos 6.22. You should probably use the 98 or ME fdisk for partitioning and there are some issues with 98 fdisk and drives larger than 64 gig.