Format hard drive

[poohbie]

WINDOWS WILL NOT LET ME FORMAT A HARD DRIVE

 

[SESaskDFC]

Howdy:

Not if it is c: drive it won't. You will need to boot to DOS using a startup floppy in order to format !!

Murray

 

[dunka]

I have the same problem with my new slave drive. The startup bios recognises the drive (and as the slave too) but windows (98) won't recognise it!
How do I change this?
The best I can do is windows thinking it is a quarter of the size! but why wont it see it as it's actuall size!?

I need to format it basically and have no idea of how to do it!

 

[Grenage]

How old is your system/motherboard?

If it is an older model it may not support larger drives.

 

[wolluf]

In win98 you need to use fdisk to partition the drive before you can format it (run fdisk from a dos prompt - enable large disk support - from within windows - change to disk 2 (option 5), and create one or maore partitions as required. Set primary one active. Exit, reboot machine and format new drive(s) when restarted.

 

[dunka]

A friend had said about Fdisk and ran through the basics of it, where it would ask if I wanted to do the maximum partition and everything seemed fine untill the final Gb rating came in, this time half the size!!!
The motherboard thing was mentioned but I only got it last year, a friend has offered to see what he can do on a new(ish) computer to see if my comp can/can't determine the size of the drive.
Is there no other way!?

 

[wolluf]

How big is the new hard drive? Win98's fdisk has a problem with partitions > 64GB - fix for this here:-

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q263044

 

[dunka]

The dive is 120Gb. It's fixed now, thanks to all for the help, I was told that all went as I had tried but that a new computer was used to format it and that mine was an older one unable to do it. Hopefully all will stay well! my computer recognises the 120 size now!