Win98 installed on single 15gb partition but Winnows only sees 2gb. Why is that?

[moocat]

The drive is one partition of 15gb, it is setup as a FAT32, primary, active drive. It shows up under partition magic 6.0 as one 15gb partition. Windows only sees 2 gb though, scandisk only scans 2gb. Is there a fix for this short of a reinstall?

I've encountered this before but can't remember how I fixed it. I've aready read the FAQ here and have been doing google searches for the past hour. Can't find any info. If someone could give me a gentle kick in the a$$ it might jar my memory...or maybe just tell me what's wrong

Thanks.

 

[Budman]

Go back in partition Magic & convert it to FAT32,now resize it to the full 15gig. save & exit.

Unless you have Winnows 98a you can use fat32 for partitions larger than 2 gigs.

 

[moocat]

The partition is already fat32. That's why I'm so perplexed. Windows is misreading the partition size for some reason.

 

[Wolfsraider]

bios limitation?try maxblast or ezbios

 

[Zakule]

Is it Windows 98 SE you're using? Certain versions of Windows aren't 100% compatible with all LBA schemes (which I'm guessing is the translation method you're using for this disk).

 

[UpGrD]

If by chance that is a IBM DTTA drive, there is a jumper that when shorted, the drive is seen as a 2gb drive.
Just a thought!

 

[moocat]

This is the second system I've built with this mobo in a fairly short period of time. I didn't have this problem with the last system (it's an Iwill KK266 by the way). It's really a drag...PM 6.0 running under Win98 sees the partition correctly but the damn OS can't. WTF?!

I have someone very interested in buying this system and I can't let him have it until I get this solved. I don't want to just reinstall because I'm not even sure if that will cure it. Besides, I've got hours of software installations and tweaking already done on this &%^$#% install

I'm not sure but I think I'm reaching the end of my "computer enthusiast" phase.

 

[moocat]

desperation bump....

 

[moocat]

up again

 

[Cougar]

<< Unless you have Winnows 98a you can use fat32 for partitions larger than 2 gigs. >>




What are you talking about? Do you mean that Windows 98a can't read fat32 partitions larger than 2gb? I use 98a and my primary drive is a single 30gb fat32 partition.

moocat...

Have you right-clicked on your drive in explorer and checked out the properties? If it says that the file system is only FAT16 then that's your problem. It might be possible that Partition Magic just can't quite seem to make the fat16-fat32 conversion. Was this drive ever in another system that was using linux or NTFS? You might have to blow it all away and use fdisk to dump the whole drive and set it up again as fat32. If you have ghost and a spare drive you could just image what you've done so far that way you won't lose all that installed software and whatever tweaks you did.

I dunno if this will help, but you've got my 2 bits

 

[moocat]

I fdisked this drive when I started this build. It was formatted as a fat32 partition during the install of Windows98.

I'm going to try putting a second partition on the drive and see if it will recognize the new partition size.

 

[moocat]

Well, I put a second 4 gig partition up and now Windows sees them both at the correct size. I'm curious if I put it back to a single 15gig partition if Windows will now report it correctly.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone.