Hard Drive Woes

[technogibbery]

Recently I decided to format my Maxtor 5200 rpm 20GB hard drive to free up clutter. It was partitioned into 3 sections, at almost 7GBs each running on Win98se. Once I'd formatted it I installed an old (floppy disk) version of DOS so that I could then install win98 onto it using a boot disk which allowed me to access the CDROM drive. Thing is, once windows was installed I found that my drive had shrunken from 20GBs to just 2GBs which is hardly usable considering I enjoy the odd game.

So at this point I realised that I must have forgotten something. I tried the hard drive installation disk, and some updated versions, and even a disk diagnostic tool, but they keep on telling me that there is a 260013950 count 1 error, and then stopping. Does this mean I'm gonna be stuck playing pong on a 2GB harddrive now?

 

[4Ryan6]

You need to go into the Powermax section on the Maxtor Floppy, and do a Write Disk Pack (Low Level Format) which will restore the hardrive to factory shipping specs, and give you back full use of the drive. After completing the Write Disk Pack which by the way will take about 45m to an Hour, you will need to use the Windows boot floppy and run FDISK and repartition the drive, then restart the machine, and reformat the new partition. If you no longer want to chop up the drive let Windows in the FDISK use the maximum space for a Primary DOS Partition, and it will set the whole drive up as the Primary Boot Partition.


If you need more help post it.




Details, Details, Its all in the Details, If you need help, Don't leave out the Details.

 

[GhostKat]

Opening up My computer or windows explorer and get the properties of your drive and find out what the file system says.

If it says FAT16 you screwed up the FDISK or was using a DOS 6.x boot disk, which only supports FAT16. The partition limit for FAT16 is 2gb. If you want a bunch of 2gb partitions you can make more partitions with FDISK. if you want the whole 20gigs as a partition you'll have to 1. re-format after re-partitioning your drive. 2. get software that will extend the partition and/or convert the FAT16 to FAT32.

GK

Yes, I made it past newbie w00t.

 

[technogibbery]

Okay then guys, cheers for the advice. The neck-ache is finally over. I downloaded the powermax.exe and did a write disk pack. I then tried the hard drive installation disk but got the count 1 error, so I left that alone and did the FDISK primary boot partition, which worked to my relief - a full 20GBs set to FAT32.

It turns out that is was the antiquated DOS version that I installed that set it up for 2GB @ FAT16 (it's been a long time since I last formatted).

Thanks again.

 

[Teq]

Ok... It's likely that your DOS installation scrambled the partition table on your HD.

Next time you do this:

1) A... set your bios to boot from CD (if you have abootable CD) or B...Go to <A HREF="http://www.bootdisk.com" target="_new">http://www.bootdisk.com</A> and get a proper boot disk for your OS. (instructions on site).

2) Boot from the CD or floppy.

3) Use FDISK to erase all existing partitions.

4) Create your new partitions in FDISK.

5) Make the first partition active and exit FDISK.

6) Reboot

7) Format each partition using the command: FORMAT <DRIVE>: /u /c This does a special format that wipes the disk and checks for and recovers bad allocation units. <DRIVE> would be C: D: E: etc. for each partition on the disk.

8) Install windows.

This way you won't have the same problem again...


And, while I'm on this...

The Hard disk related command line options for Win98's FORMAT are:

<DRIVE>: = drive to format
/u = Unconditional format, blanks and recreates the entire partition.
/c = Check for and recover bad allocation units.
/v: = Volume name... eg. /V:MAIN
/z: = number of 512b disk sectors per allocation unit eg. /Z:32 == 16k AU.
/S = copy the operating system from the boot device.


For example: <i>FORMAT C: /u /c /V:MAIN /Z:64</i>
would do an unconditional format, checking for bad sectors, using 32k allocation units, on drive C: and then label it MAIN for you.

It is rare that you would copy the operating system from a floppy if you are installing windows from a CD.

FDISK has a couple of hidden toys too:

FDISK /MBR = rewrite Master Boot Record.
FDISK /I = display partition information



--->It ain't better if it don't work<---

 

[lhgpoobaa]

hehe. Gotta love FAT16. All you needed then was an updated version of Fdisk.


<b>Paying for Sex didn’t mean you couldn’t get it any other way – it meant that you could afford the convenience option, same as any other service.</b>