Hard drive not recognizing full capability

Deloris, everything was going fine. I changed my zip drive to G, until I could change back to F, after changing the Maxtor 80GB to drive D..BUT, everything that I was able to access to change the zip drive.,,.is whited out on my Maxtor Properties, with the letter "F" firmly implanted in "current drive letter assignment ". As I said above, everything under that, *reserved drive letters, start drive letter and end drive letter* are whited out. Is there anything above I could check to "unwhite" it and make it accessible?

 

Deloris

You are brobably right.

Not having anything other than the one partiton should not have any affect on the BIOS. The BIOS needs to see the FULL drive/ Formated or unformated.

Unless something new has been added that I am not aware of you can not change HD lettering from the Device manager.

Maybe the ZIP and the CDROM but not the HD.

BTW. Lis171

Have you tried booting fto a Floppy to see what BIOS sees the drive as. If it sees the full 80gig then I suspect the ZIP drive.

If it does not see the full drive then the problem ( I think ) lies with the Motherboard and/or the BIOS.

Please try booting from a floppy and let us know what you find.

BillyBob

 

OK..I did it As of now, my slave drive is D, my zip drive is F, my floppy drive was and is still A, My CDROM was and still is E, and of course..my C drive..the 20 GB one..is still C

Now..how do I boot from floppy? What do I use? Is it something that came with my Dell?

 

That is better.

But does the BIOS now see the full 80gig. If it does not that is the next problem to work on.

As to the floppy I do not have the faintest. Knowing that you have a DELL. They have their own way of doing things. And I think some of them use a special disk. ( guessing )

BB

 

Alright Lis! Bravo girl! You're batting average is going up.

Are you using Netscape Navigator? That may be why my link don't work for you.

Someone who knows something about how Dell does stuff needs to chime in here. Those of us with Generic Built to Specs computers, and have never owned a brand name one, know very little about those Brand Name critters.

 

LOL..well..I actually changed a couple of drive letters..now maybe I can graduate to novice *why did I put intermediate in my profile??*

In any event, what came with my Dell..as far as floppy disks, is one floppy called Microsoft Boot disk Windows 98 series, and one called Microsoft Intellipoint for Microsoft mouse and Intellimouse products..which reads as Disk1, setup. Somehow I have a feeling that's not what you guys are looking for hehe

 

That might just work. Won't hurt to try.

BB

 

eeek..I'm too afraid to try..I don't have the know how to fix it if something goes awry! *scared look* I mean..if I knew for sure, that was what the disk was for..then maybe I would LOL. Also, my slave drive D is still only recognizing 7.82 GB's, as you all thought it would.

 

If you have a place to backup the data on that drive, back it up before you play. Find a place.

I'd uninstall the zip drive and re-install it later.

Physically, your two hard drives should be on the first controller and put the cd & zip drive on the second controller, presuming that the ZIP drive has an IDE interface. This to preserve transfer speed on the IDE bus. Master should be drive 0, boot drive and the Slave should be your 80 GB. Start with the ZIP drive not in the configuration and when everything else settles down, re-install the ZIP drive and then the ZIP software. Before you do this, make sure you have the installation software and/or drivers.

(OK, ignore that -- you seem to have your drives ordered ok.)

If Norton sees the drive as 76 GB, then the BIOS probably sees it as that. Get into the BIOS and see if the drive is recognized. While you are in there, turn off the Dell logo and tell it to start up in diag mode or whatever they are calling it. You will then see, on startup, the size of the drive as recognized by the BIOS because the information will be displayed as part of the POST.

Make a windows 98 startup diskette.
You make one of them by going to Control Panel - Add/Remove Programs and clicking on the startup disk tab.

Go to microsoft and download the new fdisk from there. FDISK for Microsoft Windows 98 & Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition Does Not Recognize Full Size of Hard Disks Larger than 64 GB because FDISK uses some 16-bit values internally to calculate the size of the drive. Some of these variables overflow when the drive size is equal to or larger than 64 GB. Microsoft's technical article: See microsoft kb article 263044 --- then copy the new fdisk to the startup floppy. Boot from it. Run fdisk from the floppy and not from the RAM disk. You want large drive support. Without changing anything, see what size the partition on the drive is.

Make sure the fdisk is pointed at the right disk. If you have your data backed up, remove the partition and reboot from the floppy. After reboot, run the new fdisk again, and try to make a partition that is the size of the whole hard drive. If you get 76 GB, reboot from the floppy and format that drive (anything but drive C...) as FAT32.

If you don't you may need to whack some partition manager software. This is a longer explanation.

 

Here is another link. However when you read about Ranish, it says that it is for advanced users that are familiar with, & comfortable with DOS like interfaces. That lets me out. Give me Partition Magic any day. You could still try it though, just to see what it tells you, if for no other reason. Not even try to make it do any operations. Just get info with it.

http://www.webattack.com/get/ranish.shtml

 

If clicking the link does not start the download, then R-click and select save as, ftp sites can be funny that way at times

Drive letters for removable disks can be changed, Zip , cdroms, dvd and cdrws

hp was always using the cheapest bios they could, just like compaq. So, I am suspecting the BIOS more and more.

When you bootup the computer you should see a statement to this effect.

To enter setup press and it will list a key.

Now I suspect the slave option may have been disabled in the bios. I have had to turn that option on several times for severl makes of computers. But have never been into a hp. But, I think it would be worth check.

A ATA133 PCI adapter card would bypass this problem completely and add 4 more connections. This card will allow for hdds of up to 137,000,000GB but windows has a 2TB limit.

 

OK..now I see what the problem has been all along. After reading your post, bitbyter, I did a search, and came up with this.. http://help.nec-computers.com/sg/prs/art04778.asp and then this page
http://help.nec-computers.com/sg/itemnr/NECFIUP06010100.asp

Is the latter page what I am supposed to be downloading from? There is a lot to download, and do I save all of these to floppies? Still confused and moving slowly Oops..I'm only supposed to download one of those..as they are only different languages. LOL. Ok..I see UK..but no US, AND, can I just download and run this patch to make the fix..without having to make new disks and floppies and enter BIOS and egads!?!? LOL

Update: would it be better downloaded from this page?
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;ENUS;q263044


Also..do I download this to my C or D drive..?? As it's the D drive we want to fix to recognize all 80GB's. Or..do I have to point it to the drive? OR, lastly, does the patch just work on it's own once downloaded and installed, without having to make sure of anything?

 

I gotta make sure of something here. So I do have to ask.

Is it the BIOS or Just Windows that is not seing the full 80gig ?

If it is the BIOS then it has to be fixed first.

If the BIOS does not see the full 80gig nothing done in windows will do any good.

The BIOS MUST SEE the full 80gig. And it does not need to be formated.

If the BIOS does see the full unformated 80gig then it could be the 98SE limitaitons

OR the full drive is not formated.

But in any case the BIOS AND Windows must agree.

BillyBob

 

Lis, if you get one of those, get the English version.

I am not trying to dispute anyone here, but I have 98SE & I installed my 80GB without the aid of the Microsoft FDisk fix, and SE saw all of it. I just put the drive in on the slave part of the cable, set the jumper for slave, and booted up. Bingo! Windows gave it a drive letter, & all of it was there, because my BIOS also saw all of it, and I didn't muck it up by using overlay software.

I am inclined to think that there is a bad setting in the BIOS Standard CMOS settings, or when the drive was installed, it was not properly installed, & the overlay program was probably used to set it up with, & one partition was made of 7.?? GB, and the rest of the drive was left as an unallocated primary extended, with no logicals. Or if done with FDisk, the same scenario. This would definitely be one explination why Windows is only seeing 7.??GB of it.

It is still possible that your BIOS version is not new enough. Since you are getting a reading of a little less than 8GB, this is still a very real possibility, in spite of what I found on the site. If Dell special ordered a MBoard with a lesser BIOS for that particular computer when it was made, then you may be as BillyBob said, SOL. However, I am still not convinced it is the BIOS.

I am still trying to find my other link about BIOS versions.

 

After you download the fdisk file (English, I presume, as you seem fluent) from microsoft, run the exe. This installs an update.

Reboot the system. Depending on your particular version of W98, W98SE, before you did the update, you looked in the C:\windows\command directory to see that the create or modified date for fdisk was something like 4/23/99. After you installed the update, the file has a create or modified date of something like 5/18/00.

After you make the Windows Startup disk (see my previous post), you will find that it still makes a disk with fdisk that says the date is 4/23/99. Copy the newer version from c:\windows\command to the floppy.

When you run fdisk on a system with multiple physical drives, one of the selections from the menu will be to point it to the appropriate drive. Drive 0 is the first drive or master and Drive 1 is the second drive or slave. I forget what terminology FDISK uses--that's knowledge stored in my finger tips.

IF FDISK doesn't find the full 76 GB, then you need to determine if you have one of the other problems... It's probably not going to recognize less space on the drive.

If a partition manager was used to partition your drive at some time in the past, it is possible that the drive geometry is not being properly recognized/reported.

You should be able to take your Dell service code to the Dell web site and determine what the BIOS will support... ...maybe...

 

how did your friend format the drive? you have too fdisk the drive first and then format the drive. this will do the fat32 for your drive. you should have no problem after that.


Mike.

 

Dear Lis,

Are you totally confused by now?

We're trying hon.

Guys, one thing we've forgotten here. At least I did. Norton System works is seeing 74.56 GB of the 80G, even though Belarc is only seeing 8.40. Belarc sees what Windows sees. This means that Norton is most likely seeing what the BIOS sees.

Now with that possibility in mind, if it were me, I would get someone who knows what they are doing, (not the one who set it up before either) & set the 80GB up as the master temporarily, by switching just the jumper on it to master position, & disconnecting the 20GB from the drive cable for right now. Boot with the 98 floppy, & see what it says in FDisk under Partition Information, or something to that effect. Then if there are any partitions, which there will probably be at least one, plus a whole bunch of space not allocated, go to the Delete Partitions thingy on that dude, delete any & all partitions. Then make it into one big drive, & then format the whole thing. Switch the jumper back to slave, reconnect the 20GB & boot up the darn thing. See if it sees all of it then. If it does, your problem is solved.

Of course, save all data on the 80 to the 20, before doing this.

Edit:

Whoever does this should be able to tell while in FDisk if it's going to see the whole thing or not.

 

Deloris
That would be Number 4. And I agree that needs to be done.

You can get the WinMe bootdisk HERE. It has the upgraded fdisk on it. And it will work with a 120GB hdd. What I used.

 

Hello again everyone. I'm sorry, I fell asleep last night, and *obviously* wasn't able to get back here. Now..a few questions and answers to your questions.

1) Do I have to make a Windows 98SE startup disk to install that patch? I can't just double click on it and let it do it's own thing?

2)the Maxtor 80GB came brand new out of the box. Does it have to be formatted?

3)I just looked in C:\windows\command directory and I see that the fdisk.exe date was last modified on April 23, 1999. Of course I haven't installed the patch yet.

4) I use Goback, if something messes up while installing this patch, will GoBack be able to revert it to a time before it happened, or..since GoBack is on my C drive..will it not work in this case?

OK..what is the least complicated way to check my BIOS to see if it recognizes the full GB's? And should i do this before installing that patch?

UPDATE: I finally said ***, and installed the patch. No change..but before I did that, I took another look at my Norton System Info in Norton System Works. In the system tab, it lists both HD's as this:
19.01 GB, 74.56 GB, 94.0 MB
But when I click the drive tab, and choose drive D..it also only see's the 7.82 GB's with the disk usage shown as Free: 3.00 GB and Used: 4.81GB. Why does it recognize the full GB's under system but not under drive?

Also, My FDisk.exe now says modified May 18, 2000, so at least something went right. Now if it would only give me my 80 *76..whichever* GB's! lol

 

Lets back up and start over here.

Yes the brand new out of the box doies need formating in order ot use it.

But for the purpose of my suggestion below it does not.

There should be a disk that came with the HD.

I would like to see put it in and boot to it and watch the screen.

In fact ( unless DELL is different ) any old disk that will boot the machine will work for this.

To ease your mind that disk will do nothing untill you tell it to

Your machine may different. But there should be a screen come up that shows the size of the Hards drives. Plus some other stuff.

You can ( or at least I can ) use the PAUSE key to stop the scroling so you can read it better.

All of this takes place before it even accesses A: drive.

At this point if the FULL size of that drive DOES NOT show up then we got problems that Windows WILL NOT FIX. It will be either the HD itself ot the Motherboard ( BIOS ) or a setting of the BIOS ( CMOS )

It should also show in the same line how the HD is set. ATA, 33, 66 DMA LBA etc.

As a sudden thought. The new 7200 RPM HDs I beleive require an 80 conductor. That might or might not have something to do with things.

AH RATS. If your machine itself brings up these screens that I mentioned you may be able to use the pause key there also.

BillyBob