Hard drive not formating correctly

[eelman]

My pc is running windows ME =It is a
1000 mhz athlon
512 megs o pc 133 ram
soundblaster live
geforce 4 ti4200 64 meg
hard drive 1 is 40 gig
hard drive 2 is 40 gig
running on 300 watt power supply.

Well my problem is with hard drive 2. I bought it a while back and just a couple days ago I decided to install it.
Beacuse it is the second hard drive i set the jumper to case select. When I booted the it would not show up under my computer so I could format it. It did show under device manager the only option that wasnt greyed out was to make it a removable drive. Upon rebooting it was seen under my computer. When I accessed it to format it it would only let me set it as an 8 gig drive. So I did it (a decision that I regreted) Now obviosly it is only an 8 gig hard drive. I dont know how to get to the screen to format it without the drive being unformated. Even if I did it would probly only let me set it as 8 gigs. Sorry for the long post. Any help greatly apreciated.

 

[eelman]

I forgot to say that I can store data on that drive so I know that the IDE is functioning correctly just the hard drive is not big enough.

 

[pmonett]

I would first recommmend checking that HD 1 is set to Master and HD 2 to Slave.
Cable Select is an old, obsolete function and should no longer be used.
But that has nothing to do with your HD partition size. The system you have should not have any problem with a 40Gb HD, so you must have forgotten to enable large disk size when formatting, or something.
So, do you have Partition Magic ? Or a friend that can lend you a copy ? If yes, install and run. You can repartition the disk without any problem, and you're done.
If not, you're in for some data transfers.
Does your HD 1 have 8Gb free ? Does HD 2 contain data you can no longer lose ? Transfer that data to HD 1 and reformat HD 2 with large disks enabled.
As a side note, I see that you do not mention a CD writer in your specs. So you have no backup abilities. I would consider buying a CD-RW and a set of blank, rewritable disks to backup your essential data, and maybe an image of your system area.

 

[wolluf]

couple of things.

1. If you've made the slave drive cable select, you should also make the master drive cable select (cable select is not obsolete - its becoming quite common with newer 80 wire IDE cables). So either jumper explicitly as master and slave (master may need different setting if slave present) or both as cable select.

2. You need to create a partition before windows can see (and format) the drive. I don't really understand how you managed to format it at all - unless you've missed something out. In ME, you need to run fdisk from a dos box to create partition (it will also remove partitions), then reboot & format partition after reboot.

 

[eelman]

Yes I do have a cd writer and a dvd drive. Drive 1 only has 4 gigs free. Drive 2 has nothing on it. Last night I formatted drive 2 in ms-dos but even then windows would not let me do a full reformat to resize the disk, it did not seem to remove the partitions either. I do not even know how to really format in dos I was just remembering the days of my 386. Nobody I know has partition magic. When the format screen came up the only things I could choose from was regular format and ful format. The drop down box for choosing the size for the hard drive would only let me select 8 gigs. I do not know how to get to fdisk without the drive not already being unformated. Thanks for the help so far.

 

[eelman]

I forgot to say that western digiatals e mail tech support is no good, I've been waiting on them for a week now.

 

[eelman]

Ok I'm downloading partiton magic off kazaa right now. It will be done soon. What do I do in it to fix my problem tel it to remove partitions on that drive? But I never created one. Any help greatly apreciated.

 

[BuckeyeComputers]

Why not just put the 2nd drive in as master taking drive 1 out of the system boot with a boot disk run fdisk enable large disk support remove all partitions then create a primary partion esc out of fdisk restart computer, format drive it should see all 40 gig now (actually 38. something) then put drive 1 back in as master and drive 2 as slave then restart windows

 

[wolluf]

eelman,

Open a dos box in ME.
At the prompt, type fdisk.
Use the Enable large disk support option.
From the menu, choose 5 so you can select the second disk.
Now chose option 4 to display partitions on this disk (should be just one primary - if there are more, delete each one from option 3).
Now chose option 3 (Delete partition or logical DOS drive).
Then option 1, Delete Primary DOS partition - follow instructiosn and remove it (remove all partitions and drives if more than one).
Back to main menu, use option 1 to create a new partition - if you choose 100% use, this should be 40GB (or thereabouts). When its complete, use option 2 to set it active.
Exit fdisk and dos prompt & reboot the machine.
When you log back on, drive should be available to format. I would also do this from dos - format D: (it should be D - but you should also be able to do it from explorer.

PS. Have you checked/set correct your hard drive jumpers (eg, as I suggested earlier - both cable select or explicitly master and slave).

 

[eelman]

Yes I set it as slave, I do not feel very comfortable in dos I could do the same things with partition magic too right? Thanks for the help

 

[wolluf]

Yes, you should be able to use PM to partition and format a drive.

 

[eelman]

I just got it installed it doesnt see drive 2!!! But my computer does. I guess ill do it in dos.

 

[eelman]

Ok wolluf I did what you said in dos upon rebooting the computer, when I accessed to format it I could only set it as 8 gigs again. How do I do it in dos? partition magic does still not detect it.

 

[BuckeyeComputers]

The safest way is how i describe above you dont have to worry about making a misstake and formating the wrong drive. take both drives out remembering which one has the OS on it, take the slave drive and set to master or single drive and treat it just like you was getting ready to install an OS on it. boot with floppy and run fdisk and make sure that you enable large disk support. option 3 to delete all logical, extended and primary partiitons. then esc all the out of fdisk until you are back to the A: prompt. ctrl+Alt+Delete to restart. then run fdisk again enable large disk support. option 1 to create primary partition use all available space and set partition to active. esc all the way out to A: prompt again, restart your computer. at the A: prompt this time type "format c:" without the quotes yes to erase all data(there is none there anyway) after format is done hit enter for volume label which will put you back at the A: prompt turn off your computer, set the drive back to slave and then reinstall your master drive and boot into windows

 

[wolluf]

eelman - hopefully you've tried BuckeyeComputers suggestion - making the disk master, but if it didn't work (and even if it did - in fact especially if it did - doesi t still work as slave? - read on, problem may be setting for the slave drive in the bios), I'm beginning to suspect you have either a hardware or settings problem. Is the second 40GB drive detected as 40GB in the bios (ie, on the POST screen at boot). If its NOT detected properly, is the bios actually set to detect it or has it got a manual setting (eg, 8GB!)