Hi, I bought a PC recently from a market. The PC is a Pentium 2, 266Mhz and reads 10GB in the BIOS. Windows however detects the drive as being 1.99Gb. I am a novice user but would appreciate any help with getting Win 98SE to see it as a 10Gb. Thank you and kind regards Curt James

Open "My Computer" and right click "C" drive, then select "properties". If file system is FAT, the maximum partition size is 2.0 Gb. Win98 has a drive converter utility to convert to FAT32.

From January 1998,the computer bios supported more than 8.4 Gb.If you want to support the maximum size, use fdisk(if the drive conversion does not increase the overall size) and allow support for large size partitions(LBA)by answering Y(es) when the fdisk program asks this first question.Delete the existing partition and create a new one with the maximum size.Reboot and format the primary C partition set active using fdisk.Good luck.

If you do not want to lose the data that you have in the 2GB, you can create a second drive (partition) of 8GB using Fdisk. Be careful using Fdisk, it's easy to make a mistake and lose everything. Fdisk help http://fdisk.radified.com/ http://www.compguystechweb.com/troubleshooting/fdisk/index.html http://members.bellatlantic.net/~mrscary/fdisk.htm http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q255/8/67.ASP

For the task you have I suggest you consider a 3rd party partitioning software like Partition Commander or Partition Magic. Either will allow you convert the format from FAT to FAT32 AND resize the 1st primary partition without risk to the data currently on the C: drive. As previously stated, you can easily make a mistake with fdisk. Either of the aforementioned softs are very user friendly. Regards - Ray

Any partition changes made with fdisk will result in data loss on all partitions. However, you can convert to FAT32 with the drive converter in Win98 with no data loss.

It's certainly true you can convert the format from FAT to FAT32 from within windows, but that will do nothing for the partition size (which is the primary problem). That must be done in fdisk or a 3rd party soft. Changing partition size in fdsik will almost certainly cause loss of data unless you have something like Norton Ghost or another HDD to copy the C: partition to so it can be copied back after resizing with fdisk. It's been a while since I used fdisk, but I believe you must delete the existing partition and create a new one to get a larger partition. The advantage to the 3rd party softs previously mentioned is they can resize the partition without lose of data. Ray