hard drive only 503 meg? 1

[dizardsdreams]

anyone tell me why my 3.1 gig hard drive is know 503 meg after I have formatted it and dont know what I am doing.fdisk isnt working for me,its not asking is my hard drive above 500meg....help,thanks

 

[shmoes]

what happens when you run fdisk?

what partitions does it identify?


~Shmoes

I lay claim to nothing and everything. My words may be wisdom or disaster. In the end you make a choice. Noone is perfect.

 

[dizardsdreams]

hi,it does a fat 32 and formats at 503 meg I think it is.
I have done all the veriables I can think of.
I have read that it should come up with is it above 512 meg,and thus you answer yes and of you got,formating a nice big harddrive.I seem to be stuck in the old type format and dont know how to get out of it,thanks for geting back so soon.I have had windows on it but only as a small drive.
I think you maybe have to configure it through bios settings first,but I am not sure what I am doing.

 

[edfair]

Do a google search for "hard drive limits". That will explain better than I can the limits you are hitting.

Ed Fair
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.

 

[shmoes]

did you delete the partition restart, run fdisk again hit yes to the question and create a new partition?

*reminder* deleting a partition, you will lose all data on the drive, make sure you have backups.

~Shmoes

I lay claim to nothing and everything. My words may be wisdom or disaster. In the end you make a choice. Noone is perfect.

 

[shmoes]

also, you may want to make sure your bios setting is on AUTO detect at boot up. and is not manually specified.

.. If it is manually specificed make sure it matches the specs on the hard drive

Cylinders/head/ etc.

otherwise in your bios you should also have a hd auto detect option that will fill in the proper cyclinder info. verify it.

but generally auto detect at boot up is recommended.

~Shmoes

I lay claim to nothing and everything. My words may be wisdom or disaster. In the end you make a choice. Noone is perfect.

 

[dizardsdreams]

thanks chaps,I am of to my flat where my own pc is(using parents at the moment)I will check your sugestions out and let you know tommorrow is we sus it out,thanks for helping out,I,ll get back tommorrow,good night,sleep tight!

 

[dizardsdreams]

success!shmoes,thanks,I did as you siad,made everything auto,I also zapped the hard drive with a program called smart drive of seagate web site.This filled the whole drive with zeros,thus took away my mistakes,and with bios settings right,evrything is now as it should be.I am in a much better mood today,dont pcs stress you out,thanks again,I am going to try this utility on some of my other dodgy drives that never seemed to work right,see if it can help them,many thanks!

 

[shmoes]

glad to hear it worked out!

If pc's didn't stress us out, we wouldn't come back for more! =)
hehe



~Shmoes

I lay claim to nothing and everything. My words may be wisdom or disaster. In the end you make a choice. Noone is perfect.