Formatting the HD

[CraZy_MAn]

First off, i want to thanks the people over at www.sysopt.com for the "How to build my own PC" guide. Really spot on and surprisingly clear, well, maybe except the Hardrive setting part. Which brings me to my question. When i booted up my 6.4 W.D. HD (Caviar i think it is), my computer only recognized it at 2 gigs. I would like to know how to format it to its full extent. In case this might help, i have a ABIT BH6 motherboard (and you're right, O/C is so easy). Also, i haven't installed much on it yet except for the drivers for my cards, so if the HD will have to erase everything on there, which i'm sure it will, it's ok. Thanks in advance, and thanks again for the guide.

CraZy_MAn

[philipg]

first off you need a windows 9x so you can fdisk to large disk support and follow the menus from there, you will have to delete all partitions to be able to make it one whole one, make sure the primary partition is set active.

[jfk6969]

I had the same problem only my motherboard would only reconize 540 meg. Western digital the maker of your hard drive has a program call ez-drive which lets you set up your hardrive using fat 16 or 32 from windows. Fat 16 breaks it up into 4 drives 3- 2 meg drives and one leftover drive. Fat 32 keeps it all one large drive. Ezdrive can be downloaded from western dig site. Just follow the instructions

[fishboy]

first you need win95b or above. Get a bootdisk from a win95b or above machine and run fdisk with large disk support enabled. Create the primary Dos partition letting it use the drives full cabability. Then format. It will see that it will now format whatever the size of the drive.

[toms111]

Before you do anything, go into your bios and make sure the setting for the hard drive indicate that the drive is 6.4 gig. Do not use Ezdrive unless yours is very old board that you cannot update the bios.

[This message has been edited by toms111 (edited 06-25-99).]

[Ed_S]

Also be aware that some HD utils which allow full access on older MB are very tough to get rid of later. Have one WD drive which has been formatted several times since then, still shows "ontrack manager" at boot. Haven't needed it for 2 boards now, but can't get rid of it.

[Zonker]

Ed_S

The version of Ontrack I have will let you remove the driver from the harddrive. Just stick the floppy in the computer and boot. I'm not sure if you lose all the data on the disk or not.