1 Gig drive only showing 500 MB

[synchrononymous]

I have a Fujitsu 1 gig drive that I put Windows 95 on and I can only see 500 MB no matter how I look at it. It was originally a FAT partition, and with PQ Magic I converted it to FAT32 however it still only shows 500 MB. Does anyone know how I can see the whole drive without loosing anything off the drive?

 

[GoLdFiNgeR]

first i would boot off of a floppy and do an fdisk, look in there and see if you used the whole disk for the primary partition or not, if not, you can create a secondary partition (d, if it says you did, you may have jumper setting on the mobo wrong, or a bios setting wrong:

what kind of mobo, cpu etc do you have, do you have latest drives and everything?

will

 

[wildfirecomp]

Windows 95 does not have the ability to read large hard drives. Also, your mobo bios probably needs to be flashed.

 

[Snickle]

Does the BIOS see the full size?

Which version of Win95?
Win95/95A can only work with FAT16 drives/partitions up to 2047MB [2.0GB].
Win95B/95C can also work with FAT32 on larger drives.

 

[synchrononymous]

I booted off a floppy and still can't see the whole disk with fdisk. I did go get the latest drives at windows update, but I'm not sure what a mobo bios is or how to go about flashing it? This is Windows 95B that I've put on a toshiba 486 laptop with 12 mb of ram.

 

[edfair]

You may be limited to 540 usable space due to a M/B bios design. Do a google search for "hard drive limitations" for a full explanation. Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[wolluf]

Berton asked - Does the BIOS see the full size? You need to check this FIRST (you may have to input CHS values for the drive in the bios settings). As Ed says, there was a mobo limitation on disk sizes it could recognise on old boards - this may be your problem. If it is, you might find either a bios upgrade for mobo (unlikely on one so old) which will allow it to recognise larger disks or overlay software on disk manufacturers site to fool bios (also may be difficult because of age, but worth a look).

 

[synchrononymous]

I couldn't find a bios upgrade for this laptop anywhere, however, I changed a setting in the Bios for the HDD from STANDARD TO NORMAL, which I had tried previous but was given a non system disk error on boot up. This time after changing the setting I booted off a floppy, and FDISK read a NON DOS partition. So I tried PQ Magic again to change the partion type, and low and behold I was given a message that my disk had errors at sector 63 (Something about CHS Values...Wolluf!) After fixing the errors, I could see the whole drive and made the partition the entire size. Thank you to everyone who helped me with this problem! Berton for getting me to look closer at the Bios, and GoldFinger for getting me to boot from a floppy to FDISK. All of you, everyones input was extremely valuable in helping me to solve this mystery!...This site Rocks...

Bob

 

[Snickle]

You're welcome, we're glad to help.