Hard disk size troubles!!

[Dark_Warthog]

I just got me an maxtor 40.9 gig hd.
But i can't get the disk any bigger than 32 gig's. I tried the maxblast utillity but it won't work. I wouldn't mind if i had one of 32 and one of 8 but how do i do that?

[NDC]

40.9GB!!!!! That's huge! I think it would be a better idea to partition the disk into smaller drives even if the drive was recognized as the maximum size.


To partiton the disk, you will need a disk utility such as FDISK or Partition Magic. As for FDISK, you won't need to buy it, it's in the Win98 Boot diskette. But the downside to FDISK is that you will lose all the data that is saved on that new hard drive. If you want keep all the data that is saved on that HDD, you will need to use Partiton Magic. Partition Magic will partition your hard disk without losing the data that is on it.



[This message has been edited by NDC (edited 09-21-2000).]

[Dark_Warthog]

well i'm running win me so partition magic won't work, i tried fdisk but when i make a primary disk it uses only 32 gig's

If i try to make an extended partition it says it doesn't have space but there's at least 8 gig's left, i haven't a clue how to fix it.

[NDC]

Hmmmmm. Have you talked to the guys at Maxtor?

[Dark_Warthog]

no not yet, but there has to be a way

[NDC]

I think your BIOS needs an update if it's an Award BIOS.

32 GB limitation. This condition is caused by the Award BIOS inability to address hard drives greater than 32GB. Award has been made aware of this issue and has fixed their "core" BIOS as of 6/99. They are passing this information along to the motherboard manufacturers' that use their BIOS. Updates for the BIOS should be available soon from individual motherboard manufacturers' to correct this problem. The following are options to overcome this hang condition:
http://www.maxtor.com/Maxtorhome.htm



[This message has been edited by NDC (edited 09-21-2000).]

[Dark_Warthog]

i already have the updated award bios.

[howste]

Do you have the latest version of Maxblast? The latest version is 9.20M. MaxBlast ... breaks the 528 MB, 2.1 GB, 4.2 GB, 8.4 GB & 32 GB storage capacity barriers... I'm sure that some older versions won't get you above 32GB.

Steve

[jad1097]

I am getting real tired of telling everyone this but here it goes again. Partition Magic does work with Win M E. Update PM 5 to 5.01 and create the two disks. This will allow you to run PM under DR.DOS when you boot to them.

Does the BIOS recognize the entire size of the drive? Maybe Win M E is like Win 2000 where it does not support a volume size larger than 32gigs using FAT32? ~EDIT~ Just checked and Win M E supports supports
drives up to 2 terabytes .~EDIT~ I would recommend that you partition that drive into several partitions and put the program files on another partition. I have my 30gig drive divided into 5 partitions.

[This message has been edited by jad1097 (edited 09-21-2000).]

[Solidus]

I thought I read somwhere that the reason why maxtor hard drives are so cheap is because they are not really the size they claim to be. They use some sort of compression or optimizer or something to make it hold that much data. Is there any truth to this?

[Win_98]

They use cheap component that tend to give off dust therefore bad sector develop anywhere between 1 month to 2 yrs, just like the connor hd drive, or seagate. I have opened one before, and there was dust all over the center media.

[Mntsnow]

Nah....Maxtor produces an Excellent drive.

[NDC]

Yeah, I have a 5 year old Maxtor HDD and haven't had problems yet. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[Dark_Warthog]

thanks guys i got working!!

[howste]

So, what did you do?

[Dark_Warthog]

I removed the non-dos partition that the maxtor utillity maxblast put on it, after that i removed all other partitions on it.

After that i created a win 98 se bootdisk because the win me bootdisk won't support fat 32 (really weird).

I rebooted with the boot up disk and ran fdisk and voila it worked 1 huge 40.9 gig (39.500 mb) hard disk fully operational.

So that's how i did it.