fdisk cannot partition a large HHD ? 3

[ylan]

I used fdisk ( from Win98 bootdisk) to partition a new , 80 Gigs slave Western Digital HD in WinXP Pro. Aparently, it did not work as the size of the HD shown in fdisk was all wrong ! My guess is that fdisk only works up to certain HD size. I might have to use a third party pogram to do the job ? Please confirm my worst fear and suggest a solution. I also wonder if WinXP Pro has any utility for partition only ( i.e. without WinXp installation ) ?

 

[cool4242]

FDISK will support atleast 117 GB of HDD. It does show the wrong size initially in DOS, but not to worry, when you actually load it in windows it will be the correct size. I have a 117 GB HDD and it shows something like 54 gb when i use fdisk, but when i boot it up in windows it shows the full 117 GB.

 

[bcastner]

With a filestore of FAT32 you are not going to create a partition larger than 32 gigabytes.

XP has a command line utility, diskpart.exe, but it only will work under an XP CMD session.

In addition, most XP users would use a NTFS filestore for such a large drive, and that option is not available to you under Win9x.

 

[ylan]

Thanks, cool4242 and again bcastner, for the quick response. After reading your tips, I plan to partition the secondary new HD into 4 partitions at 20 Gigs each , using fdisk ( version in Win98 SE) . My busted HD was also a Western Digital (13.6 Gigs, 5400 RPM) died so suddendly after producing clicking noises... I wonder if heating inside the PC could cause such a disater for a brand-name product like Western Digital. I am thinking of a local fan for the HD specifically. I welcome comments on this issue.

 

[sfvb]

I know a lot of the WD drives from 20G to 40G had a problem that seemed to be corrected after 40G. Now, that is just from personal experience, not a fact.

I stayed away from them for quite some time, but I am back to being comfortable using them again. Currently we are having problems with IBM Hard Drives that come on their servers. The failure rate, while out in the field, is way out of sync with MTBF rating. And I mean WAY out of rate.

 

[bcastner]

ylan,

If you buy ATA133 7500 rpm type drives, they run very hot. Try not to stack them in the drive cage, and a HD fan sounds like a very good idea.

sfvb, you must have one of the "DeathStar" Deskstar drives from IBM. I know of little you can do but plan on a premature failure.

 

[bcastner]

Just a comment about the confusing state of partitioning and formatting under XP. XP did not ship with support for LBA48, and a partition and format with XP as a new install will limit you to a 32 gigabyte partition. You can use Win98, as cool4242 stated above, to create a partition size of 117 gigabytes. XP can format the large Win9x partition.

When Service Pack 1 is applied to XP, LBA48 support is added, and Disk Management can partition and format drives well beyound current capacities. So, use Win98 to create as large a partition as you can. Boot from the XP CD and let XP initialize and format the partition. Install XP. Install Service Pack 1. And deal with the rest of the drive by now adding it to your original partition, or using XP to partition and format the available space.

 

[sfvb]

bcastner,

Thanks for the "DeathStar" message, I knew something had to be wrong with these drives. I did a search on the DeathStar nickname, and these drives have apparently earned their nickname. I'm software, but I have to try and clean up the mess these HD failures make on our clients Oracle databases. Not fun.

Anyway, I'll pass the info on to our Hardware and Sales Dept. Thanks again, and here's a star.

Steve

 

[bcastner]

If I remember right the drives led to a Class Action suit, of which I have no idea what happened.

The story was, and it may be myth, that the water used to wash the drive platters at the factory in Malaysia was contaminated and affected the drives. This supposedly was the cause, and supposedly was corrected. I have no idea. The user community was convinced it was the S.M.A.R.T. bios feature IBM introduced with the drives, and that the disk thrashing that went on to continuously monitor the SMART parameters was the cause of premature drive failure. Beats me, I just know they are a known problem drive in the user community.

Best.

 

[ylan]

Thanks bcastner and sfvb all these precious pointers ! The ATX box I have , offers only 2 slots for HDs ( Stacking one on top the other as bcastner warning against :-( and no space for a direct fan and its casing ) . If I have only one HD then bcastner's suggested implementation is ideal ... Despite all these, I am very happy to inform that "fdisk" provided in the Win ME bootdisk can support HD with size bigger than 64 Gigs easily . The partition went smoothly without any incident. BTW, you can have some good refs and can D/L the new fdisk.exe here :

http://fdisk.radified.com/

Again, thanks cool4242, bcastner and sfvb for their admirable expertise !

 

[bcastner]

Ask over at the Hardware Forum, as there are some serious overclocker types there: forum602 was my thinking that the heat problem was one of general lack of cooling, and convection of heat between the drives. They likely now of a small muffin or heat sink fan that could be mounted on the side of the drive cage just to blow are through the gap between the drives.

 

[bcastner]

ylan is correct that a ME fdisk will work well. A little advertised fact is that if you put a floppy disk in an XP machine and format it as a system disk, you have created a ME boot disk. In c:\windows\system32 you will find a small collection of ME DOS utilities, including fdisk.

 

[sfvb]

bcastener,

I just joined this particular forum. I'll have to read through some of your previous replies to other questions, tomorrow. I'm sure I'll learn something. Thanks again.

Steve