Western Digital 80GB HD - Free Space Reported Incorrectly :-( 2

[johnoverall]

I'm hoping someone here can help me; I'm building myself a PC for the first time and have hit a stumbling block. I have installed the essential elements in the case to get the PC running: motherboard, CD Rom, PSU, Floppy disk drive, memory, GFX card and added a new keyboard and mouse. I have other cards to put in, but for the moment the system is bare bones.

The hard drive is an 80GB Western Digital 7200rpm Caviar which supposedly partitions and formats fine, as soon as I try run setup prog to install an OS (in this case Windows 98 SE) Scandisk fails saying that 'free space is being reported incorrectly' and setup cannot proceed.

The BIOS auto detects the drive and I can read and write to it from the DOS prompt. It formats at just over 76GB once system files are in place but I just can't get beyond this point and it's been three weeks of experimentation. I've had enough, here are some of the things I've tried:

Thinking it was my QDI Advance 10F motherboard that was at fault I flashed the BIOS to the latest version with no success and then bought a new replacement PIII Gigabyte board and the problem with the drive persists.

I have used the 'fixed' version of FDisk that allows drives over 64GB to be partitioned and formatted with no success

I have used Western Digital's data lifeguard disk tools to check the drive and bios settings for faults, all report back with no errors.

I've tried partitioning the drive, splitting it into two drives with 50% of the space each and FDisk reports that only 37% space is utilised per drive!

I have used Western Digital's data lifeguard tools to prep and format the drive ready to load the OS with no success.

The disk partitions and formats in my old PC, with no errors to 8GB and Scandisk doesn't complain. I just want the partition ten times bigger, that's all!

I have turned off UDMA in the BIOS settings and tried formatting etc again, with no results.

Have tried the BIOS optimised defaults with no success.

Essentially, I'm just one step away from loading the operating system and one step away from chucking the thing through the nearest window. If ever there's an advert for purchasing a complete system this is it!

Can anyone help me before I tear out what's left of my body hair.

Kind regards,




John

 

[gargouille]

Just possible that you have a corrupt Fdisk...try making a boot disc from a working Win98 machine...or download one of the many bootdisks out there and try it.
Is this a new HD? If not, ever use any 3rd party partitioning on it? Have heard of such things from this...

 

[gargouille]

Forgive me, John, I know not your level of expertise...but describe HOW you're formatting/partitioning.
Is it possible there's a error in this process?

 

[666cartman]

I think it is because vendors divide by 1000 to get GB out of MB while your system devides by 1024.
e.g: 80000MB/1000=80GB
80000MB/1024=78.125MB

 

[666cartman]

uups 78.125GB of course, sorry my fault

 

[johnoverall]

Thanks for replying y'all, I appreciate you taking the time out. First of all, this HD is brand new, purchased by me last month. Came sealed with a creation date of early August. Also, on the tools front, I've only used FDisk and then resorted to Western Digital's tools once this failed. In order to install their EZ-BIOS s/w I put the drive in Manual / LBA and altered the cylinders, heads and sectors according to W/Digital's install docs.

How am I prepping the drive?

Initially, I ran FDisk from a Win98SE created boot disk and then found out that the version of FDisk I had was the old version. So I downloaded the fix, unpacked it on my old PC and added the *new* 98SE FDisk to the floppy and overwrote the old one. The version and date matches that in the Microsoft Q&A.

Here's what I'm doing. At this point the disk is partition free. I boot from the disk, start the PC with CD Rom Support and once at the prompt I run FDISK. I enable Large Disk Support and then create my Primary Partition using 100% of the drive space. I then reset as instructed and reboot, again using the floppy disk, I then format the drive (/s) to make it a bootable drive and then reboot.

I've done the next step in a variety of ways, but here's how I think it's done. I alter the BIOS to make the CDRom the boot device and run setup from the Windows 98SE CD in the drive and it then runs Windows Setup. Once it runs Scandisk it says that the Free Space is being reported incorrectly and setup doesn't proceed. On the odd occasion I've managed to get around this, Setup says it's corrupted or it goes all the way through to restarting the machine and getting ready to run Windows for the first time and then says elements installed are corrupt and closes the machine down to 'It's Now Safe to turn off you Computer'.

Having now swapped the motherboard and used both Windows 98 and Windows 98SE boot disks, the only common factors here are me and the hard drive. The Western Digital diags say it's okay, so I think I'm doing something fundamentally stupid.

Have also tried to install a 2.1GB drive and the same errors are presented.

This is getting me down, if I didn'tt know better I'd hit the bottle...


Kind regards,




John

 

[wolluf]

It may be other hardware - given 'bare bones' - memory, motherboard or cpu likely. If you've more than one memory stick, try each one on its own (and/or other memory if you have it). If its not that, swapping out cpu or motherboard may be more difficult (or rather, costly).

 

[gargouille]

Does this install CD work on another computer?

 

[johnoverall]

The install CD was used to install the OS I'm running on my current (clunky old pre-MMX) PC. So you can see why I'm a bit out of the loop with the new kit I have. But it def works. And it's original as well, no dupes.

Granted the first board I had was second hand, but the new Gigabyte I only bought (brand new) this week. It's a PIII GA-60XT(A). Can't be the board if they both present the same error I suppose. The processor is a PIII original as well, seems to be running okay according to the BIOS and diag check using Western Digital D/Lifeguard tools.

The memory is SDRam, two sticks of 32Mb and one of 64Mb to make up the 128Mb. Am unfamiliar with this newer stuff as I'm used to EDO Ram and the old 30 pin stuff you find in 486s, but as I understand it there shouldn't be any hassle with mixing and matching different values of memory. Have tried pulling them from the board and there's no change in the drive's reaction to being formatted.

Am passing the drive to a computer engineer mate of mine tomorrow for him to tinker with over the weekend. Time's running out for me on this as the wife is pissed at being a PC widow!!

Thanks again.



John

 

[666cartman]

Alright, second try:

80000MB/1024 = 78.125 GB (this is the way your os calculates it)
80000MB/1000 = 80GB this is the way the company is calculating it to say it is more do you understand that ?

1024Byte = 1KB
1024KByte = 1MB
1024MByte = 1GB

 

[wolluf]

Still banging on about memory - 2 sticks of 32MB & 1 of 64? How OLD is that memory? (I've had problems with older memory in newer motherboards...). Memory is very cheap currently - if yours is old buy a stick of 256MB (its only £24 here in UK, US usually cheaper).

 

[gargouille]

John:
Definitely let us know where this one's hidden...(it's gotta' be something simple, doesn't it?)
I'm still marvelling that this is your wife's machine and she's been without it for 3 wks.!
My wife can't go a day without Freecell.
She's a Network Admin and doesn't want to compute when she comes home...just lost in Freecell.

Thanks for your tolerance under fire...

(Ya' know what...there's something else that's common in this thread...the CDROM!)Na

http://wwwww....couldn't

be!?

 

[johnoverall]

Dear All,

Wolluf: No idea of the age of the memory; pulled from a working machine and added to mine, that's about all I know about it. Thanks for the tip, I'll go buy some new memory for testing purposes this weekend. I planned to get this badboy above and beyond 128Mb anyway.

Gargouille: I'm now kind of hoping my engineer friend will be able to put a fresh spin on this as, frankly, I'm stumped (it doesn't take much). :-D Given that the wife is currently reading 'Men Are From Mars...' she should know better than to 'loiter outside my cave' while I'm trying to sort this problem out. On one hand I have her nagging that it isn't done yet and on the other she's complaining that I'm spending too much time tinkering with it and not spending any time with her! You can see what kind of pressure I'm under here... Adding stuff to the equation are we ;-D ?? The CD has potential I guess, especially where the failed setup is concerned, but then I've had it unplugged and used the IDE2 plug to try and format the hard drive using a standard IDE cable. Made no odds. Have an old 24 speed somewhere I could try instead.

666cartman: Understand what you're saying with regards to the calculation but why the differential if I'm using the drive manufacturer's own prep' tools? Scandisk helpfully offers to fix the free space but does nowt. Am still of a mind that this is BIOS related as opposed to hardware. Even entertained the possibilty of a boot sector virus but all the disks I've used for the install went through the latest Sophos suite at work so, although possible, I'd say it's unlikely.

Keep the suggestions coming.

Kind regards,




John

 

[Guest_imported]

Just wanted to add that I have the same problem with my Western Digital 120GB HD - It reports 111GB total size running under windows XP. I assumed that it was related to miscalcuating using the 1000 vs. 1024 as 666cartman pointed out. I should also point out that I have 2 friends with the same drive using the same OS reporting the same TOTAL size.

 

[Guest_imported]

I found the Following on the WD site...Looks like what 666catrman was saying:

******************* S N I P *****************************
The displayed capacity is correct for a 120GB drive. When you see 111GB, you are looking at Microsoft's binary representation of the drive capacity. A drive's capacity is measured by using the total number of bytes available on the drive. A 120GB drive has roughly 120,000,000,000 bytes available for use. A decimal (base 10) gigabyte is equal to 1 billion bytes. Therefore, you have 120 billion bytes or 120GB.

120,000,000,000/1,000,000,000 = 120GB

A binary calculation (base 2) gigabyte is equal to 1,073,741,824 bytes. In binary then, you have 111GB because you are dividing 120 billion bytes by a larger number. This is simply a reporting difference caused by using a base 2 or binary calculation.

120,000,000,000/1,073,741,824 = 111GB

In the end what really matters is the number of total bytes of space available on the drive, since the byte is the actual storage unit. Our 120GB drives have approximately 120,000,000,000 bytes of storage space available.

***************** S N A P *********************************

 

[johnoverall]

Every day's a school day, thanks for the posts chaps!

My engineer mate has successfully installed the HD in his own system; formatted, partitioned and OS loaded using my Windows CD. So that rules out the drive and s/w, he's going to transfer the drive to my board and see what happens from there.

Will keep you posted. Any ideas what to get him as a thank u as and when he fixes it?

Kind regards,



John

 

[johnoverall]

Step up Wolluf and take a bow, twas indeed 'dodgy' memory causing the prob.

Thanks again to you all for your assistance and input.

Much appreciated.

Kind regards,



John