"Disk is Full" error, but hard disk is not full. 1

[davidlfliang]

I have one computer running windows 98 as backup server. It has a 18.6GB(reported by OS, 20G reported by BIOS)FAT32 formatted hard drive(one single partition).

Just recently, the hard disk usage has reached to 7.53 GB, then strange error always comes up saying "Disk is Full" whenever copy the files to the disk, although from the File Explorer status bar, there is still 11.1 GB available on the disk.

I did some research on the net and found in some cases there is a 8GB limit in regards to the hard drive. But, that would normally show the limit in OS or BIOS directly.

In my case, both OS Win98 and BIOS report the correct hard disk size, even in File Explorer it reports the correct size, but why this "Disk is Full" error comes up?

Can anybody tell what has caused the problem?

Thanks in advance
David Liang

P.S. some other background info:
1. the machine was previously running under Redhat Linux 7.2
Fdisk /mbr was used to remove the Linux records before installing the windows 98

2. I tried all the options in BIOS setup, CHS, LBA, Large and Auto, none of them has the impact on the problem.

 

[TekTippy4U]

Post your Config.sys and Autoexec.bat files here to give us all a clue possibly

TT4U

Notification:
These are just "my" thoughts....and should be carefully measured against other opinions....I try very hard to impart correct info at all times.

 

[edfair]

I would suspect that the FAT has become corrupted.
What are the results of chkdsk or scandisk?

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[davidlfliang]

Thanks everyone helped me.

Ed Fair's advice is very helpful. After running the scandisk, it fixed problem. The hard drive is indeed full already, just for some reason, the OS reported the usage size wrongly. Now, I just need to consider upgrade the hard disk to a bigger one.

Thanks again to everyone replied my post

David Liang