Hard drive not recognizing full capability

and a process that is very easy to mess up even of you are supposed to know what you are doing.

One you hit a key at the wrong time you may well be SOL very quickly. I have been that route too

And by the machine in question being a DELL some of what I think may not even work.

They are for sure not the same as one I build myself.

BillyBob

PS.
I may be off to get a new 80gig HD myself. This 40gig is running out of room.

BB

 

The BIOS autodetects something.

Yes, installing the "damned" non-patch for FDISK might have something to do with the size reported. Remember the explanation about number of bits afforded for this operation?

The problem with that display is that it is to be expected that the listing for drive 2 would look like the listing for drive 1. IE, you would at least expect a report of a partition of 10804 and percentage of about 13%.

So the question is "Why is FDISK not reading the information for drive 2 like it is reading it for drive 1?" There is no recorded percentage of use. There is no listing for the partition. There is no size for a partition. You would be expecting to see that stuff.

So, maybe you have a non-standard partition table like one that would be set up with a disk manager. I don't know because I don't look at drives that have disk managers on them using FDISK. I know that disk managers sometimes move the partition table. So if FDISK is not employing the extensions loaded by the disk manager, and I think it is not, then Fdisk is looking where the information isn't. Very big maybe. I'm just trying to make sense out of why you don't see what is expected.

Remember, maybe.

In your documentation for the drive, do you see anything about "overlay ", "MaxBlast" software, or "EZ Drive" or "Ontrack" disk manager?

Except for FDISK /STATUS, you run FDISK from the DOS environment obtained by booting from the W98 startup disk. Partitioning from a running W9X system is not a good idea. There's a KB about this on the Microsoft site somewhere.

If FDISK was used after a disk manager, any bets, as to what happened to the drive (geometry) and how it is treated, are off, until the drive is wiped, and repartitioned with FDISK, or the drive is wiped and the disk manager is re-installed. Disk managers are typically used to overcome BIOS limitations if there are any.

What's in the package/documentation for the drive? Time to read.

 

The problem with that display is that it is to be expected that the listing for drive 2 would look like the listing for drive 1. IE, you would at least expect a report of a partition of 10804 and percentage of about 13%.

So the question is "Why is FDISK not reading the information for drive 2 like it is reading it for drive 1?"

EXACTLY the same question(s) that I had.

I agree. It is not the display that I would expect to see either.

I have a very strong feeling that that HD was installed not paying attention to Dells' rules.

Just for the giggles of it I took a look at my BIOS. FORGET even THINGING about using it to help.

BillyBob

 

Unfortunately..the friend who installed it for me..had taken the box with him..as this drive was a gift from another friend..and he simply put it in for me. He says he still has it..so when he is able..he will pop over with the "software "..BUT..if I can do this with a startup disk and fdisk..why would I need that software? I assume the usage in that DOS command I posted is *blank* %, because I emptied and formatted the 7.82 GB's on it. Could that be a reason why?

 

Lis,

Didn't you read my post on 15th May 2003 14:57 on this same page? I explained it all in it as best I could without having pictures to look at to refresh my memory with, and no one else disagreed with it so far. Please read it.

Why in the world would the friend take your box & manual & stuff? That don't make sense. It belonged to you, & he wsn't the one who bought it. I'm assuming it's a he.

 

LOL..yes..he's a he..but he claimed everything was recognized and set up correctly, so I didn't think there would be a problem..as it was listed on my desktop and in My Computer..and I was able to move my files that I wanted to back up, into it. It was only a few days later, when I realized..after right clicking it in My Computer *when it was drive F* and chosing properties, to see how cool an 80GB usuage "pie slice" would look..that I noticed it was only using 7.82GB's..and was almost full. Soo..I let it go for a few months, as I had all the room I needed, then finally came to the conclusion a few days ago. "wait a sec..I want those 80GB's!* LOL

In any event..I apologize, Deloris..I did see that post..I've just been slow following everything. I have another question though, since we changed my slave drive to drive D --- when it comes to the part of my tutorial where it says

"note: The Logical DOS drive will be assigned the next available drive letter. For instance, if you already have C; the new drive will be D: If you already have D then the new drive will be E and so on "

Well..my problem is..this drive is already installed, and it's already labeled D! Will fdisk change that?? Or will it keep it as D? Is there anything I need to do in that case?

 

Apoligy accepted.

Live, & learn.

It shouldn't change it, since you have assigned other drive letters (E & F) to your zip & CD drive.

I would reassign the zip & CD drive letters again, as I previously suggested, if you plan to partition this 80GB into four 20's. That will save a lot of confusion later, and will also give you extra drive letters for windows to assign to those four partitions. Windows will move the zip & CD drives up the ladder anyway, but I like to do it myself, so I know what the heck is going on.

If I get confused when people are answering my posts, I print out all of the pages of the post & re-read every post. You'd be surprised how much that will help clear up confusion in the old gray matter.

 

My Fdisk status shows on a 40gig druve

Disk---Drv-------MB---------Free---usage
1----------------38162----------------100%
---------C:------3718
---------D:------6777
---------E:------5679
---------F:------7632
---------G:------7632
---------H:------6723

CDROMS are S: & T: Which were set there right from the git go as soon as Windows was installed and before any software was installed. No matter what machine I install Windows on the CDROM is set up high before installing software from it. So I have plenty of room to install another HD with a few partitions without creating problems.

This is where a little PLANNING comes in BEFORE installing the OS.

BillyBob

 

Unfortunately guys, I can't seem to make a startup disk. It gets to 99% then blue screens and says "error in writing to disk in drive a, lost data or corrupt files" ..or something to that effect. I have tried everything using my brand new box of floppies. Of course I formatted each one before trying it, then made sure the write tab was set so it wasn't protected etc.. I have no idea where to go from here I wanted to do this so bad!

 

Remember, as was said already, if you do something that doesn't work, you can go back and do it another way.

If it were me, I'd first try avoiding the use of a disk manager and would have FDISK do the work. The possible success of that pretty much depends on what the BIOS will support.

You may decide after reading your documentation that you want to follow that guide to attempt restoration of the drive.

Let us know how that goes. If you can keep communicating here, people here can keep telling you what is the next step. That might presume a second running system while you were working on the XPS-T.

Eventually, BIOS permitting, FDISK, by itself, will work. Either it will work using FDISK /MBR to rewrite the boot record and then proceeding with FDISK partitioning, OR it will work by reducing the first sector on the drive to zeros followed by one of A) using FDISK to partition or B) using your Windows 98 distribution disk to partition the drive as part of the start of the install. It would be nice if choice "A" works, but sometimes it does not. So you have to be prepared to take choice "B" if necessary.

For choice "B ", You can quit the install after the partitioning process without installing the OS. This supposes that you have the Microsoft Windows 98 installation CD and not some image restoration CD supplied by Dell. If your help currently has that, tell the help to bring it along with the disk documentation and materials. Considering the vintage of the computer, there's a good chance that you have the MS W98 installation CD for the Dell.

After the partitioning, you reboot and format drive C. Following that, you put the drives back the way they were.

That's the general idea. When you get to it, there are more details.

ON THE OTHER HAND, if when the help shows up, the help can fix the drive...

 

How to create a W98 Starup Disk

Try rebooting the system. Then shutdown everything you can shutdown without shutting down the system. Stop all the background programs. Stop all other programs. Then try it.

 

Lis,

Go to this post & read it. http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17917 It may help you with some things.
There was something I forgot to mention about deleting partitions in fdisk. You don't want to delete your C drive. LOL That's your 20GB.

This post is an example of why I did not do mine the way others seem to favor. Why I disabled my Main drive, & put the 80 as the master temporarily. Then too, I was going to use part of mine as a DOS Primary to house an OS, and you aren't, so that post explains to me why the main drive has to still be in use as master if making the second drive usable for data only. As this post said, make sure you select change drive.

 

Bitbyter, I did what you said, but it again stopped at 99% and blue screened, saying that some data or files are lost. Then again..I opened up the floppy, and these are the files that are on it.

Extract.exe
Fdisk.exe
Findramd.exe
Drvspace.bin
Command.com
Autoexec.bat
Setramd.bat
Aspi2dos.sys
Aspi4dos.sys
Aspi8dos.sys
Aspi8u2.sys
Aspicd.sys
Btcdrom.sys
Btdosm.sys
Config.sys
Ebd.sys - icon is faded, lighter than the others
Flashpt.sys
Himem.sys
lo.sys - icon is faded, lighter than the others
Msdos.sys - icon is faded, lighter than the others
Oakcdrom.sys
Ramdrive.sys
Readme.txt
Ebd.Cab - in a zip file

Now..does this means I have all the files for a startup disk? Or was something else supposed to happen after it blue screened at 99%? I won't try to use it until I hear back, because the blue screen happens at 99% of "preparing startup disk files ", which I assume means there was more to come after, but I'm hoping that it just means it's placing the files needed on the floppy. What should I do?

Ok..small update. I downloaded a windows 98 startup disk from a site..then double clicked on the exe and put in the floppy like it asked me to. Instead of blue screening, since I was doing it from an exe...I got this error message at about 91% :

disk error on track 72 head 1 floppy error

Does this mean it's my Floppy disk drive with the problem?

 

You have a bad floppy. Use a different one.

How to check what is on bootdisk:
If you do a Dir of A from the C prompt, then you wouldn't see all files. You need to remove the attributes to see everything.
Those files are hidden system files. You can do this from a Dos box in Windows.
EDIT
Try this
A: enter
attrib -s -h -r enter
dir /p enter
or if you want to generate a list on your desktop in a file named floppy.txt
A: enter
attrib -s -h -r enter
dir>C:\windows\desktop\floppy.txt enter

Should be 24 files.

This will bring up all the files that are supposed to be on that disk---check to make sure they are all there. When you reach the end of the list that's showing on the screen--hit ENTER and it will show a few more. Here is everything--are there any missing?

• 
  Aspi2dos.sys
  Aspi4dos.sys
  Aspi8dos.sys
  Aspi8u2.sys
  Aspicd.sys
  Autoexec.bat
  Btcdrom.sys
  Btdosm.sys
  Command.com
  Config.sys
  Drvspace.bin
  Ebd.cab
  Ebd.sys
  Extract.exe
  Fdisk.exe
  Findramd.exe
  Flashpt.sys
  Himem.sys
  Io.sys
  Msdos.sys
  Oakcdrom.sys
  Ramdrive.sys
  Setramd.bat

www.bootdisk.com Has what you need. Just downlosd the bootdisk that matches your operating system. Then when you double click the download, you will be prompted to insert a floppy in the drive. Do that and click ok and it will make the bootdisk for you. Be sure to lock the floppy after it is made.

Now, to get the letters in oder, the C: drive has to be hooked up, and in Fdisk, select 5. and then select the 80GB hdd. Now you have to make the whole hdd extended, then after that you will be able to make the logical partitions.

 

Train, I used every single disk in my brand new box of Sony floppies..and the same thing with all of them.

Update..I did what you said in DOS, Train..and they are all there.. 24 files. Does this mean I can use this floppy as my windows startup disk and use it to help my HD recognize all 80GB's?

 

I DID IT!!! That windows startup disk had all the files I needed. I followed my tutorial, and then rebooted. When I rebooted, I opened My Computer, then double clicked on D..where it asked me to format it. I did that, and now when I right click on my D drive and choose properties, it says I have 74.5 GB's of unused space!! Is there anything any of you would like me to do to insure all is as it should be?

Whoohoo! I'm so happy I accomplished this *I hope* LOL

As for making 4 partitions...are these partitions all assigned a letter as if they are a separate drive? I'm still mega confused about partitioning.

 

BTW..I just did an fdisk /status in a DOS window, and this is how it reads now *I'm typing it like last time, because I can't figure out how to copy and paste from there*

Fixed Disk Drive Status
Disk Drv Megabytes Free Usage
1 19469 100%
C: 19469
2 76340 8 100%
D: 76332

I don't quite understand what the 8 means under Free for the D drive, but it seems to be subtracted from the 76340 and made into 76322. (???)

 

Bravo, Lis. Proud as heck of you gal!

It took us a lot longer to get you to this point than it did you to do it. Now was it all that bad after all? Whew! This has been a real lesson.

If my guess is correct, that 8 is an 8MB allocation that fdisk set aside for it's own purposes. I wouldn't worry about it for one minute. I assume you know that C is disk 1, & D is disk 2.

Yes, they are all assigned a drive letter by Windows. That's why I suggested you re-assign the zip & CD ROM drive higher letters than what they have, way up the scale, before partitioning the 80 into four 20's, because Windows would re-assign them anyway. Might as well do it yourself & save Windows the struggle.

 

I would not worry about it as some hdds for some reason do that. Now you have done the worst part. That being the first time.

I myself have been there.
Now you are ready to play with it and set it up to the sizes you wish.
Congratulations on a job well done!

You might want to look into getting Partition Magic, because with it you can change partition sizes, etc and not lose what is on your hdd. I have read that Ranish [ free] can do it, but I have never used it.

 

The biggest reasons for partitioning is so you can make saved data safer from OS boogy men, organize it better, and use Scandisk, & Defrag to their best advantage. A thorough Scandisk has a hard time with a drive larger than 32GB, the Defrag takes a very long time on large drives with a lot of data. It is best to have it partitioned as BB suggested, so that each partition can be Scandisked & Defragged individually at your convenience, rather than trying to do the whole thing at once.

I have a 30GB & an 80GB, and my combined drive letters go all the way up through the letter O, just for the hard drive partitions. That don't count my Y CD ROM drive, & my Z CD/RW Drive.