Only 2Gb instead of 17 Gb

[half_throttle]

I have recently built myself a new PC using the HDD from my old 486.

The HDD is a Fujitsu 17Gb MPD 3173 AT.

My old system would only read the drive as 2Gb and when I installed it in the new system, for some reason, it is still only reading 2Gb. I thought I had set it to accept large drives, but.........:o :o :o

Eenyhoo, what is the safest way to extend the partition to 17Gb without the risk of losing all my data?

I have a copy of Partition Magic which came on the MoBo CD but I'm a bit scared of using it.

TIA

Paul

[Mstoumba]

Pqmagic would be the place to start.

Is your drive fat32 or fat16 ???

1.) If it is fat16 then use your pqmagic to convert it the fat 32.
2.) Restart your system to see if it still boots. It should.
3.) Then after that's done you can expand your drive to what ever size you want.

[half_throttle]

I converted from FAT16 to FAT32 when I installed on the new PC.

It's just that I've never used Partition Magic and I'm a bit wary.

Cheers

Paul

[half_throttle]

All new parts except HDD and video card. (Another thread!)

HDD is only about a year old.

I converted to FAT32 when I installed the HDD in the new system and I thought I had stated to read large drives, but...........

OS is Win98SE.

I'm still at the entry of a steep learning curve guys. :o

Be gentle with me! :D

I really just need a step-by-step talk through Partition Magic. (If that will do it) If there is a partition at 2Gb I just need to remove/shift it.

TIA

Paul

[Banditfromhell]

This is my personal opinion, i would just end up taking fdisk and delete the partition, reboot, then fdisk again, make sure you enable large disk support, then reboot once again, the reinstall everything, but thats just me..

[araaraara]

When you had the drive in your 486, it was using FAT16. Well, FAT16 can only recognize drives up to 8gb and partitions up to 2gb. When you plugged the drive into your new system and converted it to FAT32, that's all you did, convert it to FAT32. The 2 gig partition has remained unchanged. That's where Partition Magic comes in. It will let you expand the 2gb partition to fill the whole drive, without losing data. It's not too risky to use, as I have used it numerous time on several machines. Just make sure you pay attention to the prompts and follow the instructions. There should be wizard that you can use. The resize wizard should make the job quick and easy.

[LordKwiKSilva00]

here is what u do....
1. fdisk it
2. format the drive
3. fdisk again
4. run partition magic
5. load your os on


then you are done, and this should work

[Praetorian]

Is LBA enabled in the BIOS?

[G Ray88]

Half_Throttle, chances are the your BIOS won't support a 17GB hard drive you will need to use the setup disk that came with you new drive. Or you might try going to www.ontrack.com/fujitsul use their Disk Manager Disk Go to setup the drive. Good Luck!:)

[Rugor]

Ok the original PC seeing it as only 2GB is most probably a BIOS limit. There have been several BIOS based HD size limits, primarily 500MB, 2GB, and 8GB.

Personally I would recommend that you backup all your data and then do a complete repartitioning and reformat. You may need to install some drive geometry software but don't do that unless you have to.

[araaraara]

The 504mb limit happens on mostly 486 machines and early pentiums in which their bios doesn't support more than 1024 cylinders. You can actually put a 540mb+ harddrive in with no overlay software as long as it has less than 1024 cylinders as most 540mb drives have less.

The 2gb limit is caused by the maximum partition size for FAT16. You can however, make multiple partitions to use up all the space. This is also the cause of the 8gb limit in some computers because FAT16 can't use a drive larger that 8gb.

In all other cases, the bios is at fault because it can only handle up to a certain number of cylinders. The limit varies depending on the bios date and the maker.

Most Pentium systems should support a couple of gigs, like 4 or even 8. P2's may have trouble with drives larger than 32gb. Any newer motherboard should support up to the biggest drives available.

Run fdisk and select option 4 to view all the partitions on the drive. It will tell you the total drive size(according to it). You will also see the % of how much of the total space that 2gb partition is using. If it is using 100% of the drive, than you have a bios limit.



Did you know that there is actually a limit in all versions of windows(even XP) which limits the max usable size of each partition to 123gb?