Where's the other 10GB of my hard disk ?!!?

[sparrow18]

Few days ago, my dual OS (XP and 98SE) on a WD 40GB came to a problem, I encountered a blue screen when I'm in winXP and therefore forced a reboot. Later, I found that XP is inaccessible anymore, so I reformat the HD.
To my surprise, fdisk reported ONLY 30GB !!!!! winXP is previously using FAT32. The only way I could detect the remaining 10GB is on winXP disk manager and partition magic, but not fdisk.
So i thought fine, will convert the 10GB back when i install a new winXP, but strangely, after installing win98 followed by XP, the computer couldn't boot XP with the message "Bad Operating System", but it works fine if i only install ONE OS, either XP or 98. anyone knows what's going on???
I could do with just XP, but obviously something is very wrong. installing just 98SE could not detect the 10GB !!!

I tried mbrkill (thinking some virus problem...nope)

so, i hope there are something to cure my hard disk.........i hope this is still insured.

 

[Jeff7]

I think that WinXP will only allow partitions of 30GB if they are using FAT32; if you want bigger, you'll either need a different version of fdisk, or else just move to NTFS.

 

[Kwatt]

Use the HD install disk that came with the drive to set partitions and format the drive. Most utilties that come with the drive can format the drive as 1 partition.

You can usually download the utilties from the Manf. web site.


Kwatt

 

[sparrow18]

Actually, I have already downloaded a "hard disk managing" utility from the manufacturing website, and I even try to perform a zero-filling which is practically a low-level format. But strangely it stops at 80% or so. Does that mean my hard disk is faulty? (it has been a year). First time met such a problem, usually, if anything else failed, I usually do a low level format and everything SHOULD be fine. But i'm still determined to save this hard disk as a warranty would take around 3 months or so.

 

[Jackal&Cash]

Originally posted by: sparrow18
But i'm still determined to save this hard disk as a warranty would take around 3 months or so.

I think WD have an advance option for RMA. Which they will send u a replacement first, then u send your old one back. CC is required tho.

Originally posted by: Jeff7
I think that WinXP will only allow partitions of 30GB if they are using FAT32

not true, I formatted my 120gb HD using FAT32 in one single partition