Can't access hard drive

First I would check that the HDD is being properly reported in the BIOS and has been properly formatted. I have seen many large HDDs improperly reported due to older utilities that did not recognise the larger HDDs. Once say a 40GB HDD that the BIOS thought was only 4GB, BIOS upgrade fixed that one.

Also check the space being reserved for system settings and adjust to ones that better suit your needs. If you have Microsoft Windows you will find that the default settings of certain services make a significant part of the drive unaccessable whilst still empty.

Recycling Bin has a default reservation of 10% of the HDD. Right click on the Icon, open Properties and rest to 1%.

Virtual Memory usually defaults to 2 to 4 times the amount of RAM. Accessable through the COntrol Panel >> System adjust to what you think is needed.

Restore usually defaults to about 12% of the HDD.
Control Panell >> System >> System Restore tab, highlight a drive and then click on the Settings button and adjust to about 200 to 400 MB.

Paging usually refers to the Paging File, that is the system file that the virtual memory is stored in. If the HDD that the paging file is on does not have enough space for it to use it will chuck a major wobbly on you.

I often set up a seperate partition just to place the paging file on so that it will NOT get any interference from any other apps etc being loaded.

Yes take heed on what first guy answered! True It profs use a separate partition for system, page(swap)file and data. This vastly improves disk life while also preventing the operating system from messing with your hard work.

1) make sure bios properly identifies the drive
2) partition drive by carefully analysising what
software will be using eg:Win98 needs 400MB min and win2k needs 850MB min just for op system programs added need at least 2GB to begin with
3) once you have the main opsystem installed set paging use to fixed size on seperate drive (don't use full size of separate drive as paging or you will constanly get drive full warnings)
4) tweak other settings as per first responce
5) if you use a sepearte data partition you can move the mydoc and mydownload folders to the data partition and thus make both back-ups and fragmentation issues very easy to cope with.

good luck
rick

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