Tom's Guide | Tom's Hardware | Tom's Games
 |
 |
 |
Hi, I just formatted my hard drive and deleted my partition in DOS and after i got windows 98 installed there was a lot of my hard drive space missing. I had a 20 gb hard drive and a 80 gb hard drive but all there is on the 20 gb hd is 1.95 gb and 74.5 gb on my 80 gb hd. If anyone could help me recover my missing 23.10 gb please let me know.
First, with all the variables taking place it's best to keep things simple. Start with your 20gb HD. Depending on the MFR, go to their web site and download (western digital) "Data Lifeguard Tools". (Seagate) Seatools. Maxtor also has installation software. First do the bios check. Then do a low-level format, then partion as desired.
They all have easy to follow, step by step menus.
0 
I don't know about the 80 gig but it sounds like the 20 gig is partitioned as fat16.
Run fdisk on each drive and choose option 4 and see how the partition is identified under "system". If it says fat16 you'll need to repartition. Make sure you enable "large disk support" on the first screen. Then you'll need to format and reinstall windows.
0
i checked and it is in FAT32. here is the rest of the info just in case you need it.
Partition - C: 1
Status - A
Type - PRI DOS
Volume Label - none
Mbytes - 2000
System - FAT32
Usage - 12%there is also another partition listed but im not sure what it is, but im guessing it is the rest of my hard drive.
Partition - 1
Status - none
Type - EXT DOS
Volume Label - none
Mbytes - 14598
System - none
Usage - 88%for everything that says none it means the space was blank. hopefully this info helps out. also if possible could you explain how to fix this because i dont know a whole lot about computers.
0
Ok it looks like your 20 gig has 2 partitions on it. One is 2 gig and the other almost 15. I don't have my calculator handy but if you multiply the sum of those by 1.048576 (the ratio of millions of bytes to megabytes) you should get your 20 gig. Also it doesn't look like the second partiton is formatted so your OS is probably not seeing it as a drive.
What I'd do is boot from a win98 floppy, run fdisk and remove those 2 partitions. Then repartition the drive as a single partition. Reboot and run fdisk again to verify that it's partitioned correctly. Then reinstall windows.
Post back with the results.
0
i tryed that, and it led to even more problems. i had to format again and now windows installing (im on a different computer). something i did notice was right before it started installing windows a message came up saying it detected a windows NT partition and that space cant be used on windows. dont know if that will help any but i will try gettind a partition program to see if that helps me out any.
0
OK first off I'll mention that HD manufacture's drives are rated at 1,000,000,000 bytes per GB this is incorrect. the actual number is 1073741824 bytes to a gigabyte. They do this to make their drives seem bigger than they actually are. You should (from dos) remove all partitions on the first drive using fdisk, then exit fdisk then restart the computer using a boot disk. run fdisk again and set-up your partition. make sure you say yes when it asks to use all available space as the primary partition. now exit fdisk and restart again. format the drive. restart then install windows. I know all the restarting seems redundant but it ensures that the os reloads the partition information. I have seen computers where I have deleted and created the partition in one session and had it completely screw-up. similar to what you are experiencing.
0
There's a "delpart" you can get from www.bootdisk.com, I think, that can remove those stubborn NT partitions.
Removing partitions should be fairly easy but if you're unfamiliar with it I guess it can be difficult. You may need to do as DOC suggests and download a utility from the HD manufacturer.
I think there'll be a lot less confusion if you can manage to partition the 20 gig as a single partition especially since you have an 80 gig also.
0
i have already tryed deleting all of the partitions but it will only allow me to delete the primary. when i try to delete the extended partition i get a message saying something about a logical drive but i dont have any logical drives.
about finding software from the manufacturer, i have searched the maxtor site and could find nothing. i may have passes it up not knowing what the right file it but i didnt see one.
i am not worried about getting the space from the 80 gb drive back because 75 gb is plenty for me so i just need the space for my applications drive (c:). i am also sure that there was more than that 75 gb so something did mess up.
0  |
 Right click to save-as......
|
S.M.A.R.T.
|
This post is quite old and has been locked from receiving new replies. Please create a new posting instead.
| Ads by Google |
