Question: I correctly formatted a new 80 gig HD, but my computer (win98se) tells me I only have 40gigs of space! What happened to the rest of the hard drive?
The IT Guy says:
Several possibilities come to mind. The first thing to do is to see if “overlay software†came with your new hard drive. The BIOS installed with some older operating systems limited the addressable hard drive space, but overlay software will trick the BIOS into addressing more hard drive capacity than originally intended.
If this does not work, another possibility is that the jumper cables on the hard drive may be set incorrectly. In order for older operating systems to recognize drives sometimes there is a jumper cable setting that limits the addressable size. Although this is not very likely it is possible, so check the documentation about jumper cables; it should have come with the drive.
Another possibility is that either your BIOS/CMOS settings need to be changed so the entire drive capacity can be seen/addressed, or you just need to run “fdisk†and repartition the drive. Try running “fdisk†first: boot form the Win98 CD, go to a command prompt, and navigate to the directory containing “fdisk.†Repartition the drive as a single partition. When “fdisk†asks you about large disk support, choose “Y†for yes, then select option 4.
If the drive is not recognizable after this process, you might check the BIOS/CMOS settings for your computer. Depending on the model, you should be able to hold down a key sequence at startup to view and change these settings. If you cannot make a change to allow addressing of larger hard drive sizes, you may be able to download a CMOS/BIOS update for your computer that will allow this.
Next Tip: Check Hard Drive Speed When Upgrading
