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FDisk and Hard drive size (Win98SE)

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My home PC crashes religiously every 6 months. When I FDisk (Enable large disk support = Y) and load a clean installation of WIN98SE, my BIOS will indicate a 10GB hard drive (which is true) but the windows properties of the C: drive indicate a 4GB hard drive. What am I doing wrong? I have seen this in other PC's so it's not just me.

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by thechas

What size does fdisk report for the drive?
You can use fdisk to examine the partition without changing anything.

Does fdisk show any free space on the drive?
More than 1 partition?
When you partition the drive, does fdisk report the correct size for the drive?

I myself have seen this only once, and it was when I fdisked a new drive from within W98.
For some reason, fdisk did not partition the entire drive.
When I booted from my W98 startup disk, ran fdisk, deleted the partition, and started over, everything went okay.

For detailed info on fdisk, check out the fdisk information link at www.fdisk.com

Chas

by pinoy_teknik

But Enabling Large Disk Support not means that you use all the parts of your drive.

Try this, Run FDISK /STATUS
It will going the display the usage of your hard drive, which is in percent....if the 100% means that you use all the parts of your hard drive.
If it is not

Try to repartition..
If you're not so familiar with FDISK
try to download this...it can help
http://www.fdisk.com/fdisk/FDISK.HLP.zip

or Go to

http://www.fdisk.com

for more information..

HOPE YOU MAKE IT..
SYRUPHINE

by lord ago 1

Actually, some others I know ran into a similar problem. What happend was that "supposedly" the version of fdisk was older than what was needed. So, from a 15GB hdd they only saw 8 GB. CMOS reported it as 15 GB to top it off. A really good cure for this was to use Partition Star. The program has a help section that will show you a huge variety of different partition types(with much detail) and let you choose one or more to use and then be able to format each partiotion. To top that one off, I used it and partitioned/formmatted the 15GB hdd in less than 3 mins. It gave me the whole drive, no fuss, no muss!!! The others were right in telling you to wipe out ALL partitions and start over but I think it would be more helpful/easier in your case to use this program. Also note that the program never caused any of the problems normally found in similar programs like Partition Magic. And it was incredibly easier to use!!!

Have Fun!!!
Lord Ago 1

by tstobbe

The reason it only shows 4gb is probably because it's an older pc and the bios won't recoginize anything larger than that. There is 3 ways around it, partition the drive into two partitions, try updating the bios, or you can buy a eide controller card.

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