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wrong hard drive size

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szahn

Programmer
Sep 7, 2004
7
US
after my windows me installation, my hard drive says it have 3 GB left, when it really has 80. The file format is FAT32. Why do I get this strange error?
 
Where are you getting this information from?

How large is the hard drive?

How did you install windows ME?
 
in my computer, I right-clicked on C:\ and viewed the properties.

When I went to fdisk, it said my disk had 79 GB.

I installed windows ME over Windows XP, reformatting the entire disk.
 
so if it thinks 3GB is left (in My Computer), how large does it say the whole drive is?

what does fdisk tell you now (you can run it from a dos box in ME and use its enquiry mode)? You definitely have just one partition? It does take up all available space on the drive? You say you reformatted - did you remove XP partition and create FAT32 one for ME - or was XP on FAT32 and you just formatted it
 
It says the drive size is 3.89 GB, and when I was running windows XP I had more free space that just that (about 20 gb free).

using fdisk, i know that I only have 1 partion with 100% in 76317 bytes.

when installing windows me, I did not go through fdisk, I just ran the setup and I think the setup took care of everything. FDisk says I have 80 GB on my hd, but c:\ properties days I only have 3.
 
I suspect you've got a corrupt partition table - and may need to wipe the drive and start again.

Try downloading the boot manager from and install the GUI - it displays drive & partition information, and usually detects & displays partition errors.

Or you could download diagnostic tool from drive manufacturer's website (most have one) to see if that reports anything untoward.
 
i used the program and it says my hard drive is running Windows 98 and it 74.5 GB. There is only 1 partion.
 
should I maybee download a driver for my hard drive?
 
curiouser and curiouser

sounds like ME is misreporting the drive size.

Another app which can give you a breadown of disk usage can be found here -
Try running scandisk - it may be simple corruption which scandisk will just fix.

If still the same, could try copying lots of dat (> 3gb) to hard drive to see if windows will allow it - and how it reports afterwards.

You'd probably be hard pressed to find a driver for your drive if its a standard IDE - and the fact that its workning and boot-us/fdisk show full size suggests ME's built in driver is fine.
 
okay, I will do that. Maybee I'll just re-install Windows ME if all else fails. Thank you for your help.
 
Also make sure you have all of the service packs and updates for ME. There was I drive size reporting issue I remember some time ago. It sounds like just the problem you are having. I don't remember the exact patch but if you are updated, it should be covered.
 
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