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Hi all.
am having a few problems here, i hope someone can help.
i recently installed a new harddrive as my other went bad, its a samsung sc152l, 120GB. a friend of mine helped me install it as i got a little confused and still am. windows tells me that my hard drive size is only 19GB (the same size as the one i just replaced). how do i get it to recognise the other 100GB??
i searched the forums but it hasnt really helped, some people suggest using partition magic, others suggest flashing the BIOS (dangerous??)plus i have also read that because it is win98se it isnt 'capable' of recognising a drive bigger than 19MB.
Belarc advisor tells me this if it helps.....
Drives
20.41 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
11.71 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free SpaceCyberDrv CW038D CD-R/RW [CD-ROM drive]
SAMSUNG CD-ROM SC-152L
Generic floppy disk drive (3.5")Generic IDE hard disk drive (20.41 GB) -- drive 0, No SMART Driver
Local Drive Volumes
c: (on drive 0) 20.41 GB 11.71 GB free
if someone could help me out and clear this up for me i would be really greatful.Many thanks.
peace.
When you first power up the machine and it runs its POST (Power On Self Test), the hard drive(s) will be listed on a "quick" screen right after the memory check/count. Try and hit your Pause or Scroll Lock button and post what it says. This is what the drive is recognized as in your bios.
If your bios can't recognize a drive of that size, you'll have to install a "drive overlay" software package (from the drive manufacturer) in order to get the full capacity.
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hi dave, thanx for that. first off can i say that i messed up on some details i incorectly said i'd installed a samsung sc152L, that is actually the cdrom drive sorry (DOH) anyhow, the HD we installed is a samsung but strangely? there is no info with it, all there is on the box is "samsung 120GB 7200 ultra ata 133 low noise technology 3.5 hard disk drive 943044". sorry again for the confusion.
dave, if i read the screen correctly HD is reported to have a size of 65535MB??? still only half of the full capacity but 40GB more than windows itself is recognising??
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When you start the PC it should show you how to get to the Setup screen. Mine is hit the Delete button during the POST.
From there you need to use the Auto-detect hardrive utility for it to see the drive is now there.
Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - 263044
"Fdisk Does Not Recognize Full Size of Hard Disks Larger than 64 GB"HTH
Bryan
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I neglected to mention that the MS article also provides a link to download an upgraded FDISK utility to allow it to see the larger drive.
Regards,
Bryan
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that looks great brian, thanks.
the only thing i'm not sure of is it seems too simple ;0)
im sure im already set up to auto detect drives but i will check it. if i run the hotfix is there any danger of me losing any data etc, and will it really correct the problem??
im still a little nervous about all this.
many thanks again
peace
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HI all
from post #2 it looks like you have a bios limitation , you can do 1 of 3 things.
1) upgrade bios if there is one
2) use a IDE plug in card
3) use a drive overlay - likely loose a data on hddNote sure if data will be lost or not on the options
Not sure why the hdd shows as only 19g vice 65g unless when you ran fdisk you did not choose "enable large disk support" in which case the hdd is fat16 vice fat32.
upgradeing fdisk will not help out your problem but you should upgrade the program
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My BIOS has a 32GB limit and there are no available overlays for it.
If you in fact have the 32GB limit then an overlay can get you past that.
"dave, if i read the screen correctly HD is reported to have a size of 65535MB"
(65535/1024=63.9990234375GB)I suspect that you do not have the 32Gb limit due to the above information.
It is then that you will need or want to get past the 64GB limit with the upgraded FDISK tool.
HTH
Bryan
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hi brian. i upgraded the fdisk tool.
if i run fdisk /status it tells me ive now got a total of 70951MB (69.2GB)a bit of an increase on the previous run before the upgrade. windows however still reports that it is a 19GB drive.
will i have to reformat the HD for it to know it is 69.2GB and as it seems, will i never get the the full 120GB the drive is capable of??
many thanks for your help again
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there are several reasons why Win only shows 19g.
run fdisk - say yes to large disk support, select option #4 - post resaults.
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thanks TopFarmer....but will that mean i will lose my data?? i will need to back it up if that is the case??
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Without running it myself I do not know. I beleive Option #4 will do nothing but show you information.
Bryan
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hi TopFarmer.
I ran fdisk, option #4 and got thispartition = C: 1
Status = A
Type = PRI DOS
Volume Label = Sputnik2
Mbytes = 19469
System = FAT 32
Usage = 17%
Total disk space is 11449Mbytesthanks again guys
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ok it shows that only 17% of the hdd is used by the primary partition. You have the rest of the hdd unpartitioned 83% or 99g. You will need to run fdisk again and partition the rest of the hdd. I would partition that size of drive into 3 to 4 partitons (each will receive a drive letter) but that is up to you. you can read more on partitions at http://fdisk.radified.com/
Note: I do not know if the data on primary partition will be lost or not, dont think so but back up what is important first to be on the safe side. :) something will aways go wrong. :(
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If the Primary partition already exists and you run Fdisk to configure the balance as Extended then, unless you're really careless (or unlucky), the Primary should remain intact. Subdivide balance of drive into a few logical-drives; allows for easier data organisation, faster defrags. Nonetheless if there's anything in the Primary that you regard critical (data/special drivers etc.) perhaps back them up first - off the drive.
Also if the bios is not able to handle a drive that size - simplest (best(?) way to resolve that aspect is to install a Promise (or similar) controller card. Gives you a current bios; 2 x 2 EIDE channels; will handle 'all' current drives.
If you do not see the full drive after Fdisk routine to configure the Extended partition then you will almost certainly have a bios that is unable to handle that size drive. If this is the case then install the Promise card... Typical cost of the card around $40/£40?
Fdisk detailed how to (courtesy of M$):
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q255/8/67.ASP
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Yeah, if you just partition the remaining space as an extended partition and create one or more logical drives in the extended partition it shouldn't affect the primary partition you already have. If you remove the partition you already have in order to change the size of the c: partition then you'll lose all the data on it.
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"a friend of mine helped me install it as i got a little confused and still am. windows tells me that my hard drive size is only 19GB (the same size as the one i just replaced)."
Is the windows installation (on the new drive) a fresh install, or did you happen to "image over" the old drive to the new one?
"dave, if i read the screen correctly HD is reported to have a size of 65535MB???"
(I'm Dan by the way, Dave is that other guy. ;>) ) Bios is showing 65GB according to the above. Yet in your post #13; "Total disk space is 11449Mbytes" the upgraded fdisk is showing 11GB as the drive total. Something is wrong somewhere. I think it's been established that you have a bios limitation of 65GB. But the different totals you are getting leads me to think something is amiss. If you imaged the old drive to the new, this could be causing some of these problems.
In some bios's when you do an Auto-Detect, you are presented with two to three choices. (Usually on older machines.) One of the choices will have a Y next to it. This is the parameter which will work best according to your bios/motherboard. If the drive was set up with a choice other than the Y choice, it will still work OK, but sometimes be a bit more sluggish. If you go back into the bios and choose the option with the Y, it will work fine, usually a bit better, but it won't see the data that's already on the drive. Doing the choice switch won't erase the drive until you perform further setup actions. (Fdisk & format.) So what all this is leading up to is the additional question as to if you (and your friend) had set up the drive in this manner.
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This does look more and more like a bios limit issue? That being so I'd cut my losses time/effort-wise and install a current (Promise or similar) controller card. The benefits I've outlined earlier, and it all should come right once the card is correctly installed. You then run Fdisk/format to configure/format balance of the drive as you wish it to be.
The "idiot's guide" (the manual) from Promise is usually pretty straightforward/well presented so there should be no problems in installing the card etc. - and it shouldn't take very long to do it all.
You "can" use drive-overlay software to accomodate the bios issue (most drive web-sites offer some "freebie" version or other). Personally I tend to avoid those utils; the less "clutter" there is between the bios/drive/OS the better...
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Thanx for all the help and suggestions guys. whilst doing a google search i managed to find out this from here
http://www.bytesector.com/data/bs-article.asp?ID=198&ct=Hard%20Disk
The installation process is no different than any other available hard drive. Once the hard drive was installed, the next step was to format it and this was the part where the hard drive acted a little funny. I decided not to have any partitions in my hard drive; therefore making the primary DOS partition 100%. If this is done you will notice than the maximum capacity you can attain is 57 GB. At first I thought maybe the hard drive was defective or malfunctioning, but then I decided to make more then one partition. This time I allowed only 50% of the total space to be used up for primary DOS partition and left the other 50% for extended DOS partition. Doing the above allowed me to have 120 GB instead of the 57 GB initially given. All this seemed a bit uncommon but I decided to go through a set of a few different combinations. After going through a couple of combinations I came to a conclusion that if the user wants to use 120 GB than he/she definitely needs to create two partitions as the biggest partition can no more be greater than 57 GB.
it looks like im going to have to back up my data again then refomat the drive into 2? partitions. unless anyone has a better idea i will try that and let you know what happens.
many thanks again.
peace
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ya, was thinking of that Bryan. Many thanx for the help and suggestions and a huge thanx for giving me the alert option. i will try to repartition but it will probably have to wait for the weekend now as i need to use the machine pretty much every day for my studies.
thanx again.
peace and good karma.
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After re-reading these posts I am lead to understand that you had not originally used the FDISK tool and only Formatted the new hard drive and then installed your data on it. This is what was amiss.
Now after reading Response Number 19 I see you now know that you must use FDISK in order to determine the partition size or sizes and then run the FORMAT to accept the data on those partitions.
Glad you worked it out.
Bryan
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i didnt work it out all on my own tho did i ;0)
i will have a bat at it this weekend and let you know how it turns out. it may help someone else in the future.
once again, many thanx, and what a great forum. if only the rest of the planet was so helpful and keen to work together we could mebbe stop that 'crashing' too.
peace.
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oh, and p.s.
Sorry Dan for calling you dave, don't know where the hell that came from. 'that other guy' is called donald...???
thanx again.
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Hi guys, just an update on the problem I was having. I fixed it :0D
I got myself a copy of partition magic, ran it, asked it to 'redistribute disk space' it did its thing for about 30 mins and I've gone from 19GB to 111GB out of a possible 120GB.
Everything seems tickety boo and the pooter is humming along nicely.
Many many thanks yet again guys. I learned some too ;0)
peace.
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