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4G or 400 megs ?

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by tech4life 1 view

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I have win 98 on a 4 gig hd..it shows up in my computer only having about 400 megs. its FAT formatted. My question is what do i do to see the whole drive ? Is this a fdisk or partition magic issue ? Or is it a bios one ?

tia
matrixtrapped@aol.com

5 replies

by stngfan1

Check your bios to see if it sees the HDD as 4 gig. If it doesnt, find an upgrade for the bios. Also try to turn on LBA in the bios for the HDD.

If the bios upgrade does'nt work you will need a Drive Overlay, that will translate the info for the drive to the MB. Ontrack and Seagate have software to do this. A FAT drive can be under 2 gig, can you use FAT32, Fat32 can be over 2 Gig to 8 Gig.

When you start FDisk it will ask if you want to make all the space a large drive available, hit 'Y', then FDisk starts. This is how FAT32 is enabled.

Partition Magic can convert without destroying data, Fat to Fat32. But you must be able to see the drive in the BIOS as a 4 gig drive first.

Since your drive is only seen as 400mg. I would Fdisk, format and re-install Win98.

Good Luck
TM.

by m.a.s. matrix

did you set up fdisk to support the full drive or did you specify the particitian to be 400mb?

if you did this, the only way you can use the other part of the hard drive is to use fdisk or partician magic and create another partician on the free space that you have and format it fat32. you can then use that space for programs, games or whatever.

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