Fdisk shows drive smaller than it really is

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jgl - 25 Dec 2003 09:05 GMT

Win98se crashed and took the 40 GB hard drive with it.
Fdisk only showed the drive as 7 GB, even though the POST
read it as 40 GB.

Replacing the drive with an 80 GB Maxtor resulted in Fdisk
indicating only a 15 GB drive, even though the POST said 80.

Where is the additional space?

What's up with this?

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Jeff Richards - 25 Dec 2003 09:57 GMT

What exactly are you looking at when you see this information? FDISK
typically reports partition space, and it is quite proper for a partition to
be less than the full capacity of a disk. For the 80Gb disk you must use
the newest version of FDISK -
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];263044
Fdisk Does Not Recognize Full Size of Hard Disks Larger than 64 GB
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP W95/W98

> Win98se crashed and took the 40 GB hard drive with it.
> Fdisk only showed the drive as 7 GB, even though the POST
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
>
> What's up with this?

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Marcel Bakker - 01 Jan 2004 14:10 GMT

Don't forget to mention that not every BIOS can support
larger disks. Check your MoBo manufacturer for a more
recent bios that supports large harddisks. Then use the
new FDISK an FORMAT utils to configure the disk.

>-----Original Message-----
>What exactly are you looking at when you see this information? FDISK
[quoted text clipped - 19 lines]
>
>.

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JBE - 05 Jan 2004 01:05 GMT

>-----Original Message-----
>Win98se crashed and took the 40 GB hard drive with it.
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
>.
>I just ran into a similar problem with Win98FE. After

upgrading the BIOS on my computer, Windows would not load.
Scandisk showed extensive file damage. I tried
reformatting the drive, but scandisk continued to show
errors and I could not reload Win98. FDISK showed the
drive to be 5.9GB, but at bootup the drive registered
correctly at 40GB. Deleting the partion, repartioning and
reformatting had no effect.

The solution was to go into the CMOS setup and set the
ACCESS MODE for the hard drive to LBA. Then delete the
partition and repartition the entire drive with FDISK.
Finally do a DOS FORMAT. I had the access mode set to
AUTO, which had originally worked, but somehow the BIOS
upgrade must have changed the default. The ACCESS choices
should be Auto, CHS, or LBA. Make sure it is set to LBA,
then FDISK and format.
JBE

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philo - 07 Jan 2004 21:48 GMT

> >-----Original Message-----
> >Win98se crashed and took the 40 GB hard drive with it.
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> >indicating only a 15 GB drive, even though the POST said
> 80.

get the updated version of fdisk

you can use a winME bootdisk from www.bootdisk.com

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Jeff Richards - 09 Jan 2004 00:45 GMT

That's interesting. The AUTO mode should have implemented LBA. It's possible
that the upgrade introduced an error that requires LBA to be manually
selected instead of AUTO (faulty BIOS upgrades are not unknown), or it's
possible that the new BIOS was attempting to identify the setting required
for the current installed disk, and getting it wrong.

It's always best to partition and format a disk with the system (and that
includes BIOS version) with which it is going to be used, but a BIOS upgrade
should not normally require any changes to the hard drive, and your warning
is worth keeping in mind.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP W95/W98

> snip <
> >.
[quoted text clipped - 16 lines]
> then FDISK and format.
> JBE

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