Can't fdisk 120GB with Win98 Boot floppy?

[Wa11y]

I'm having a problem setting up my new Western Digital 120GB hard drive. I go into fdisk with a Windows 98 boot disk, it won't see my 120GB hard drive as more than 48GB (48927Mbytes). I don't wanna format it as NTFS (I have my reasons, leave me alone!) but would prefer it as FAT32. I tried downloading the EZ-install program from WD, but I guess I can't create the disk in Win2K. And since that's all I've got around me (I'm at work right now, so I'm kinda limited) I'm sorta buggered. I've downloaded the DataLifeGuard tools 2.8, and I'll run home on a break to create that, then try that, but in the mean time, any ideas would be appreciated.

[cloasters]

Seem to remember that a patch of some kind for Win98SE will let the OS address an 83 Mb HDD. There also may be a jumper(s) on the HDD that will make the drive be seen as a smaller drive by the OS. Sure, you lose some of the HDD's capacity--but at least you can use the drive.

[Wa11y]

I'm ultimately going to be using this drive in WinXP. I just don't want to format it as NTFS, since it's my data storage drive, and I may have to use it between a few computers, and some still run Win98. So I'm just using the boot disk to try and create the full 120GB partition.

I've got the Data Life Guard disk now, so I'll give that a try.

Anyone know off hand if the Epox 8KHA+ can support 120GB hard drives?

[Wa11y]

[sigh] So close, but so far away. I got an updated fdisk.exe from http://support.microsoft.com/default...;EN-US;q263044 and ran it. Now it's seeing the drive as 11446Mbytes. So I lost about 9GB. Which is not so terrible.

[Wa11y]

Funny thing to note. After I rebooted, and started the format of the drive, it says "Formatting 48,92.09M" I'm thinking format wasn't meant to handle such numbers. But once it's done, I'll boot into Windows and let you all know how it looks.

[CeleryMan]

yeah, because, it shouldnt matter what the figure is. if it says 48, then let it say 48, it should be maxed any way, when you get into windows, it should report the 120GB. by the way, if it sais 118.2 or something like that, you didnt lose anything. alot of hd manufactures just round the numbers off to even ones like 120, when its actually 118. but, whats a 2 gig difference on a 120 GB drive!!

[Pinky]

Originally posted by Wa11y
Now it's seeing the drive as 11446Mbytes. So I lost about 9GB.

12000MB drive minus 11446 means you really only lost 5+ GB

Glad you found the solution

[Spode]

they divide by 1000 instead of 1024. bastards.

[Wa11y]

Yeah, but under windows it shows up as 119,xxx,xxxbytes or whatever. So I'm unconcerned about it. I've got a ton of space to fill.

Now the problem is filling it! I currently have three hard drives and one superdisk drive attached to my system. IDE 0,1 is my 40GB Seagate, holding my system and games on a 10GB and 30GB partition respectively. Then I have IDE 0,2 which is my 45GB Western Digital which holds my data that I'm trying to move to IDE 1,1 the new 120GB WD. My LS-120 is IDE 1,2. When trying to copy from the 45GB Western Digital to the 120GB WD, I get some errors that files can't be copied, and it also locks up a bit. I started trying to copy all the files, and got the error. So I deleted the files that did copy, and started over. This time, it froze while copying some files that had copied earlier. Aslo, after it failed the first time, I rebooted, and neither the BIOS or Windows detected the hard drive. So I shut it down and reseated the cables, and it was all good. That was then I tried copying the second time and it failed. I think it may be the the way the drive is oriented currently. I have it sitting on it end, with the IDE and power connectors pointing straight up in the air. I've done that before with other drives, but I think I may put the drive in a bay for now, just to make sure it's not imbalanced or anything. Any suggestions?

[Pinky]

I honestly don't know if positioning the drive on end would affect its ability to read/write to that degree...

Are you sure an application isn't using these files (like a file sharing app, etc)??

[Random Nonsense]

Spode had probs with a HDD the other day, wouldnt show up when formatting as anything more than 12gb, but it formatted the whole 82gb no problem

[Wa11y]

Well, I formatted it in DOS with the Windows 98 startup disk (that was a chore!), and it seems to see it just fine. But I'm thinking because of the positioning, it may be putting some stress on the IDE cable. So for now I may just put it in a drive bay and bolt it down, so it won't move around, and the fans can keep it cool. And we'll go from there. But that may have to wait until this weekend. I hate my schedule.

[Áedán]

 

Make sure there's no known issues with the BIOS on your MoBo seeing big drives. Strange things like this are either the result of DOS addressing counters wrapping around, or BIOS addressing counters wrapping around.

Both tend to lead to corrupted disk ultimately.

AidanII

[Wa11y]

Originally posted by AidanII
[BMake sure there's no known issues with the BIOS on your MoBo seeing big drives. Strange things like this are either the result of DOS addressing counters wrapping around, or BIOS addressing counters wrapping around.

Both tend to lead to corrupted disk ultimately.

AidanII [/b]

Yeah, that was a concern, but when I booted into the BIOS, it detected my drive as 120GB, so I assumed it was all good. I'm running an Epox 8KHA+, but I couldn't tell you off the top of my head which BIOS I'm running. I've never flashed it, so there's no telling how old it is. I've thought of flashing my BIOS, but I hate downtime. Guess I have plenty now!

[[PCE]Psycho]

Originally posted by CeleryMan
whats a 2 gig difference on a 120 GB drive!!

A few days worth of MP3's

[Wa11y]

Originally posted by [PCE]Psycho
A few days worth of MP3's

A few days? Sure, maybe on dailup!

[cloasters]

I'm pretty sure that Norton's Ghost prog will move an entire partition's worth of data to a new partition, of the same or greater size as the first partition. Not only that, but a system partition will retain its "authority," too. Of course, Win 3.1 through Me still have to be on the C:\ partition in order to work. However, it might be possible to break this rule if you have W2K on the same box. Maybe!

There are situations where temporarily moving the C:\ partition elsewhere may be helpful. Maybe!