80 West Dig Gig Hdd

moen · #1 29th Dec 03, 03:03 AM

I always partition and format hdd's with Fdisk and Format by booting up with a Win 98 SE diskette. Have done it dozens of times.
I have 2 Identical 80 gig Western Digital HDDs with 8 meg buffer.
One has been set up and running for 12 mos, and when I partitioned it showed a total of 76.7 gigs total space. this is split between pri ans extended partition.

Now I got a second one and when I booted up in dos snd started to Fdisk it , it shows as having a total of 10.4gigs total space. that is all that is recognized.

Then I switched to the older 80 gig drive and here Fdisk also shows only 10.4 gig TOTAL space, but the Pri and Extended partitions and drives Still add up to the correct 76.7 gigs.
I run WinXP, and in MY Computer thold 80 gig still shows and acts perfect.

Any suggestions???

war59312 · #2 29th Dec 03, 04:44 AM

You are enableing large disk support, correct? If not, that's the problem.

I have not used a win98 bot disk in ages. However I do use a winme boot disk which as never let me down as it supports ntfs and large drive support.

More than likly large disk support is not enabled. If it is then not sure as I have only had this happen twice, a long time ago.

Plus what excatly do you mean. If primay and extended still add up to about 80gb then there should not be a problem.

However, like I said I had this happen twice. The problem was that something got currupted and I ended up fixing it by writing zeros to the entire drive which took about 1hr30min.

Dave · #3 29th Dec 03, 06:06 AM

Make sure your using the updated fdisk dated may 2000 or later.
The original Windows 98 version has a bug that shows incorrect sizes on drives bigger than 64gigs.
/http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/Q263/0/44.ASP&NoWebContent=1

I'll attach the updated one for you to try.
Best of luck,
Dave

moen · #4 29th Dec 03, 06:09 AM

Large disk support is enabled.
Option 4 in Fdisk gives you the status of the drive, and it says total disk space is 10781 Meg or 10.781 gig. The Pri partition is 10 GIG, ahd the logical drives in the extended partition add up to 67.xx gig...for a total of 76.4 gig which is the correct nominal size of a WD 80 gig.

The number 10.871 gig does not bother me, but I was going to partition a third 80 drive on Xmas day and I put the pri part as 10 gig, and when I set up the Extended part it showed that I only had about 781 Meg left. I tried to set a logical drive of 15 gig, but it would not let me. It said max size is 781 Meg.

I have used WinME boot disk many times and it always worked well, but mow it gives about the same results... only a few megs different.

just yesterday I formatted the Pri partition and restored a ghost image I had made 19 Dec 2003.....no change. It also showed no damaged sectors ....no problems. And I ran fdisk /mbr, which also made no difference.

I wonder if it might be WinXP drivers that have changed somehow. Or some WinXP update could have installed a driver that conflicts.

I will restore the ghost image onto another 80 gig and then do some experimenting.
Have you ever reinstalled winXP over an existing Installation??...I did that a few times years ago with Win98, and that worked OK.

moen · #5 29th Dec 03, 06:17 AM

To Dave....I will try this right away.
I know that I have seen references to old Fdisk sometimes giving wrong drive sizes, but never worried about it before.
thanks

10 minutes later
It worked. this Fdisk reports all drives the right size
thanks again

Now I just have to see what it is you have to do to get WinXP to recognize over 137.5 gigs total disk space. wonder if SP2 of WinXP might do that???

war59312 · #6 29th Dec 03, 08:50 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by moen@Dec 29 2003, 01:17 AM
To Dave....I will try this right away.
I know that I have seen references to old Fdisk sometimes giving wrong drive sizes, but never worried about it before.
thanks

10 minutes later
It worked. this Fdisk reports all drives the right size
thanks again

Now I just have to see what it is you have to do to get WinXP to recognize over 137.5 gigs total disk space. wonder if SP2 of WinXP might do that???

http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php?id=1115

Also be sure to read from microsoft:
http://support.microsoft.com/default...;en-us;Q305098