Duron 650 MHz with 80 GB HDD can only access 10 GB

I am trying to revive an old PC from a school in my area.

It's a Duron 650 MHz PC. The HDD has died, so I bought a new 80 GB HDD.

The problem is - BIOS detects it as an 80 GB HDD, but when I ran the Windows 98 FDISK utility, it told me the hard-disk only has 10 GB.

Now, this is strange.

I have tried several BIOS options: LBA, Large, etc.

Sometimes FDISK shows me 8 GB, sometimes it shows me 7 GB, sometimes it shows 10 GB.

I tried Partition Magic 8. Like FDisk, Partition Magic told me the hard-disk has only 10 GB.

As I use 160 GB and larger disks at home and at work, I thought these problems were a thing of the past!

What can I do to use the full capacity of the 80 GB hard-drive?

Is there a special utility which allows me to do that?

Thank you!

MX
Wednesday, April 7, 2004

try a bios update especially if its "old pc"

moses whitecotton
Wednesday, April 7, 2004

I have searched for that a lot. The manufacturer of the motherboard is gone. There is no BIOS update available. :-(

MX
Wednesday, April 7, 2004

I just bought an 80GB Maxtor for my PII-233. The drive came with software that I had to install in order to allow my computer full access to all space (Drive Manager?). Perhaps there was something similar with or available the drive you purchased.

Ron Porter
Wednesday, April 7, 2004

www.wimbios.com

Philippe Back
Wednesday, April 7, 2004

Oops: http://www.wimsbios.com/

Philippe Back
Wednesday, April 7, 2004

If you're willing to spend any money at all on this, a cheap IDE controller card will have an updated/current bios that will recognize the drive, since you can't get a bios update from the manufacturer.

Dobie
Wednesday, April 7, 2004

I have found a solution.

It is a Western Digital drive, so I searched the WD site.

The particular limitation (8.4 GB) I ran into is described at http://www.wdc.com/en/library/legacy/EIDE/79-850100.pdf

There is some software that WD provides for free which patches the boot record with a small program which patches the BIOS.

MX
Wednesday, April 7, 2004

Actually I haven't tried if that utility works, but I'm downloading it, and tomorrow morning will try to apply it. :)

MX
Wednesday, April 7, 2004

Win98 = FAT
FAT16 -> 4GB limit
FAT32 -> 32GB limit

Neither of which are 10GB, but the big empty space may be giving fdisk fits.

Is XP an option? XP Pro academic retails around $80...

Philo

Philo
Wednesday, April 7, 2004

The Western digital program is called EZ BIOS I believe. Will solve your problem with no sweat.

Stephen Jones
Wednesday, April 7, 2004

The damn thing is called "Data LifeGuard 11.0 for DOS".

The exe provided by them creates a bootable diskette.

You can then boot from the diskette and do things.

I have made the disks, and tomorrow I'll try it. :-)

MX
Wednesday, April 7, 2004

look inside it and you'lll find a program called EZ BIOS.

It's quite a useful collection of tools actually. It includes one that will write over all the data on your drive.

Stephen Jones
Wednesday, April 7, 2004

Make sure you disable/uninstall virus software before installing/uninstalling EZ_BIOS.

I lost a weekend rebuilding a disk through stupid answers to Virus software questions about changed boot records. :(

Other than that I have had good luck with it.

sgf
Wednesday, April 7, 2004

Thank you for your advice.

The software provided by WD worked very well.

It even allowed me to have a 80 GB FAT32 partition on the drive. :-)

MX
Thursday, April 8, 2004

The limit for FAT32 is 2 terabyte.

For windows 98 the limit for FAT 16 is 2GB. It's 4GB for NT but Win 98 would not be able to read 4GB files.

Stephen Jones
Thursday, April 8, 2004

Yes, but the Windows 98 FDisk won't create a partition larger than 32 GB.

So you have to use another tool to partition the drive.

MX
Thursday, April 8, 2004

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