NEW 15gig HDD but only 2.5gigs show

[gjwilson]

This the first "from scratch" computer I`ve done-tons of fun. I bought a brand new IBM Deskstar 15.2 gig HDD and installed just fine but only 2.5 gigs are showing up. What`s up and how do I find my missing gigs???? Gary

[Vampiel]

have you tried using fdisk?

[Apostle 83]

Anybody? I have the same prob- Windows says my 14.4 gig hd is 2 gigs, norton system info says 13.34 gigs. What is the deal here? Oh, I forgot to mention, I hate windows98 (just thought i'd throw that in.)

[Butchk]

Did you set your hard drive up for fat32 or fat16?

[JLutz555]

Funny, i come here to post this topic and see it here already. I just experienced the same problem building my first "from scratch" computer. Mine is a 20.5 gig WD Caviar. ...Some's got to know...

[gjwilson]

I haven`t fdisk`d or formatted. I simply cloned my wife`s old HDD over to this one and it comes on fine just extremely short.

[jmatrix]

You must fdisk and format all new harddrives, even if you are just cloning another drive! Also, if you are running an old version of Win95, it will only recognize 2.0 gigs per partition. You will need to partition the drive into many 2 gig partitions...or even better, upgrade to Win 98 or at least Win 95osr2.
Good Luck,
Paul

[gjwilson]

Welllll...I tried fdisk and it says it`s already setup and it`s in fat32. Next???

[gjwilson]

I`m sorry I forgot to mention I do have win98.

[gjwilson]

I`m sorry...let me go into a little more detail. I admit I`m not too sharp (yet) concerning software applications on my computer-more of a harware kind of guy. I cloned an 8gig Acer Aspire HDD. If you have time someone please explain why it doesn`t carry over with atleast that copacity. Thanks,Gary

[gjwilson]

Dohhhh. How about going into the cmos setup and keying in the appropriate Hdd size??? It worked for me and it finds all 15,386mb now. Thanks for the forum....it helps me to think (sometimes).

[Pantion]

Run Scandisk or Norton Disk Doctor. Sometime it fixes a problem on the HD that makes it show a wrong HD size. It happened on my Maxtor 10G HD and after running NDD it was fixed.

[gjwilson]

Pantion...Thanks for the info. I tried the scandisk and it recognized 8.2gigs which was the size of the Hdd I cloned. I do have the BIOS finding 15gigs (the size of the new drive). So neither one jells but it runs smooth. I`m sure there`s something simple I overlooked. Thanks again, Gary

[toms111]

Since you cloned an 8gig drive on to your new drive, you have a lot of unpartioned free space. You have two choices.

1. Use Fdisk, set up an extended partition covering all of the remaing free space. Then create a logical partition within the extended partition. Reboot and format the new partition. Assuming this is the only drive on your computer, your new partition will now be a D drive.

2. Use partition magic and resize your 8.2 partition to fill the entire drive. This way you will have one big C drive.

[psyklone]

i've seen this before also, actually with my system. i have a 13 gig drive and if i go into MY COMPUTER and right click on the C: drive and go to PROPERTIES, it will show that i have about 2 gigs of drive space and that i've used none of it. i assume that the place that you are referring to as showing that you have limited space is probably either here of going into DRIVE SPACE in ACCESSORIES. i have no clue why this happens, but if you hop out to a DOS prompt and do a DIR, you will see that you actually have much more space available ..... if we are both having the same issue. and yes, i am using FAT 32

-z

[gjwilson]

Thanks Toms111. I`m at work now but will try that on 10/23 and see what happens.Gary