I have a major hard drive problem. I bought a new 8.4 gig hard drive for my sister's machine to replace an old 1.6 gig that had bad sectors. Anyway, I took out the old one and put in the new one, did a format and installed DOS. However, what I failed to notice was that the CMOS settings were still configured for the old hard drive. So, when I formatted the new 8.4 gig drive, it was under the settings for the old 1.6 gig drive. Now, because of this, the new drive says that there is 1.6 gig available space when there should be 8.4 gig there. I tried switching the CMOS settings to "auto" and doing another format, but that didn't work. Is there any way to totally remove the format or get it so that the entire 8.4 gig of space is recognized? Or, is the drive totally f*cked up now because of my stupidity? I would really, really appreciate some help with this about how to proceed. It's so frustrating not knowing what to do... ------------------ All hail Fadeaway's Cyberfish -- your 2000-2001 BobFinn* Fantasy Basketball League Champions!
Hmm... try setting the CMOS setting to AUTO, fdisking, re-creating the primary partition, then formatting that partition. Also, when you set it to "AUTO" make sure the zone, cylinders, etc. information it detects is correct. Those settings should be labeled on the drive itself. Hopefully that'll work. ------------------ "I encourage you to take a look. His rhythmic meter and usage of alliteration is sublime, as is his boldly dark but refreshing subject matter, which rivals that of Byron or Shelley"-- this statement was actually made by a guy who won our fantasy basketball league (fadeaway). We're not worthy.
I set cmos to 'auto' after I figured out something was wrong. How do I do this: "fdisking, re-creating the primary partition, then formatting that partition." (I'm not even sure what this means) ------------------ All hail Fadeaway's Cyberfish -- your 2000-2001 BobFinn* Fantasy Basketball League Champions!
There's a dos-based utility can use called fdisk used to wipe out and create partitions on a hard drive. Do a search for "fdisk.exe" in your windows directory. I know it was included up to Win 98, but not sure about Win ME. What you need to do is create a boot disk with that and "format.com" on it. You can create a boot disk on another machine since you don't even have an OS on this machine. Fdisk is kind of archaic to use though, so if you don't have any experience using it, it could be a b****. You can also use a utility called Partition Magic to do the same thing, but it'll cost you money to buy it. If you get butterflies when trying to do this kinda stuff, I'd just as soon take it to some mom & pop store and ask them if you could watch as they do it. Fdisk is an easy tool to use once you know how to use it, but otherwise it looks like gobbledy-gook. ------------------ "I encourage you to take a look. His rhythmic meter and usage of alliteration is sublime, as is his boldly dark but refreshing subject matter, which rivals that of Byron or Shelley"-- this statement was actually made by a guy who won our fantasy basketball league (fadeaway). We're not worthy.
DoD, I have a question: Does the install CD for Linux or NT rely on the bios setting for hard disk info or does it do its own inspection? Mango ------------------ Get it right or just don't do it! Resistance is futile....you will be assimilated. Start more Webber threads!
Okay, I was just playing around with the fdisk on my version of DOS 6.22. I deleted the existing partition and recreated the primary partition. It asked me: "Do you want to use the maximum amount of available space to create the primary partition?" I said 'yes'. It then created a primary partition of about 2 gigs (26% of total drive). Why didn't it use the full 8.4 gig? I tried several times but it will only use 26% of the drive for the primary partition. This is a tad better than the 1.6 gigs it used under my old hard drive's settings, but still not what I want. Everything in CMOS is on auto now. I was playing around creating an extended partition out of the available remaining space and allocating logical DOS drive letters to them (D:, E:, F but that didn't seem to do me any real good. All I want is to have C: with 8.4 gigs available space. I don't know why I can't make this happen. ------------------ All hail Fadeaway's Cyberfish -- your 2000-2001 BobFinn* Fantasy Basketball League Champions!
Is the version of fdisk on DOS 6.22 too old to handle large hard drives like my 8.4 gig? Maybe I need to use the fdisk in Win98 instead? ------------------ All hail Fadeaway's Cyberfish -- your 2000-2001 BobFinn* Fantasy Basketball League Champions!
I would assume that the problem is DOS idk though. When I added a HD make when I was running win 95 it wouldnt let the particians be bigger then 2 gigs but i know 98 allows bigger HDs ------------------ ~John~ Help keep the obsessed thread alive post the reasons why you are an obsessed Rockets fan by clicking here
Mango, I'm not sure about the answer to your question. fadeaway, Your diagnosis is right. DOS 6.2x doesn't allow for FAT16 partitions greater than ~2 gigs from what I remember. You would have to partition your drive so that no partition is over this 2 gig limit. What fdisk is telling you appears to be correct. I believe Win95 OSR2 (and newer versions) allows for FAT32 partitions. Try using a fdisk from that Windows release. ------------------ "If a nuclear bomb dropped on earth, two things would survive: roaches and David Falk." -- Kevin McHale quote courtesy of Patricia Bender's website.
I'm probably way over my head here, but couldn't the BIOS potentially be a problem? My old computer had this exact issue 2 years ago, trying to get it to recognize my then-new 8.4 gig drive. It wouldn't show more than 2 gigs. I ended up installing some third-party (free) software that cleared up the problem. ------------------ Bingbong was set up, led to an untimely death in the prime of his life for no other reason than pure malice. Things like that do not go unavenged. Sometimes it spills out onto the field of play.
E.T., You are absolutely right. But it would really only be the problem if a) He has a very old BIOS that doesn't support large drives. b) The AUTO setting somehow obtains incorrect zone, cylinder, sector info. The third-party utility you installed would be something that resides in the MBR to correct a) above. Something like OnTrack's Disk Manager, Maxtor's MaxBlast, or something similar. Good and absolutely valid point (you obviously aren't in over your head! ). ------------------ "If a nuclear bomb dropped on earth, two things would survive: roaches and David Falk." -- Kevin McHale quote courtesy of Patricia Bender's website.
Thanks Doc! It was OnTrack's Disk Manager. I am sure that fade's sister's computer isn't nearly as old or crappy as my old one (which was 3 years old, 2 years ago). But the symptoms sound eerily familiar. ------------------ Bingbong was set up, led to an untimely death in the prime of his life for no other reason than pure malice. Things like that do not go unavenged. Sometimes it spills out onto the field of play.
It took a while, but I finally got everything working right. The newer version of fdisk.exe (with FAT32) did the trick. After I got the hard drive formatted correctly, setting up the CDROM and installing Win95 & the Win98 upgrade was a cakewalk. Thanks for the help DoD.. you are the man! You are also my new hero. ------------------ All hail Fadeaway's Cyberfish -- your 2000-2001 BobFinn* Fantasy Basketball League Champions!
