Help Formatting my MBR(Master Boot Record)

[Gup]

I have set up a new computer for a family member and use a 16gig HDD that I had... I have used it before and it has ran fine. I went to partition and format the drive. and it will only show 500 megs of space... I can not find the rest of the drive.. I Auto type it in the bios and it does fine then I go to partion it and it goes back to 500 meg.. I have had this problem before and someone had me format the MBR(Master Boot Record) and it freed up the whole drive... Please help....

Tim😕

 

[cloudchief]

Boot with windows startup disk, at the a:\> prompt, type "fdisk /mbr" without the quotes. Hit the enter key.

 

[Gup]

Thanks for the Help... However this did not do the trick... I still am unable to get back the rest of my HDD. this is weird... only 500 megs show up.. Can anyone else out there help out on this one...


Thanks,

Tim

 

[jmorrell]

I believe the correct command is "format /mbr", not "fdisk /mbr".

 

[Timothy]

It is indeed FDISK /MBR not FORMAT /MBR that re-writes the master boot record.

 

[Timothy]

What does the CMOS setup say about the drive?

What you are describing is a BIOS that does not support a drive that big. A lot of older machines won't support a drive bigger than 8 gig.

There's an older utility called MH-IDE that shows what the drive says it is and then what the BIOS says the drive is. When they differ, you may have problems. If you send me an e-mail, I'll send it to you.

dpearce@fastlane.net[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

 

[pamf]

Like Timothy said, it sounds like an older bios .. REALLY old .. like a 486? I've got an older board here with a k6-233, and it goes up to about 4gb .. putting a hd that big with a board that old doesnt make much sense..

If it is a newer board, see if theres any bios updates for it ..