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Windows will not see entire hard drive

V

Varun

Golden Member
Hey guys. Just bought a 120GB Samsung to replace my aging, loud Maxtor 20GB drive. I went to FDISK it, and I can't see the whole drive. I did a bit of research on the web, made sure I installed the FDISK patch from MS, but still no go.

I have Partition Magic 5, which I tried to use, but it is the same result.

Other than updating to XP (which I don't want to do if I can help it being a poor student in College) does anyone know how to format and partition the entire drive? Thanks!
 
Ah sorry, I used to have my PC in my sig. I forgot I took that out.

I have an Asus A7V333 motherboard. I am running Windows 98. I just flashed my bios the other day to the most recent.

Any ideas or is it a Windows 98 thing?
 
Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Originally posted by: daveshel
Are you trying to partition the entire drive as one partition? FAT32 partitions can't be any larger than 32GB. But you should be able to make multiple partitions.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;184006
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Reread the link:
You cannot format a volume larger than 32 GB in size using the FAT32 file system in Windows 2000.
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😉
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Note the operating systems listed at the bottom. While the main text was writtne for Win2k, it applies to Win98 as well. The limitation is imposed by FAT32, not by the OS.
 
FAT32 is limmited to a max of 32gb per partition. If you're managing to get the full 120gb in one partition under fat32, I get the feeling something is going to brake and its going to be unstable.
 
Err, lots of mis-information here at the end of the thread. The "32GB limit on FAT32 partitions", is imposed by W2K and XP's Disk Management/formatting tools, *by design*, to try to motivate users to choose MS's proprietary NTFS filesystem instead of the more interoperable (with other OSes) FAT32 filesystem.

The maximum possible number of clusters on a volume using the FAT32 file system is 268,435,445. With a maximum of 32 KB per cluster with space for the file allocation table (FAT), this equates to a maximum disk size of approximately 8 terabytes (TB).
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Clearly, 8TB is a good lot more than a mere 32GB.

You cannot format a volume larger than 32 GB in size using the FAT32 file system in Windows 2000. The Windows 2000 FastFAT driver can mount and support volumes larger than 32 GB that use the FAT32 file system
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That also implies that W2K will support using FAT32 volumes larger than 32GB just fine, but you just can't format them *in W2K*. (Win98se works just fine.)

I actually also disagree slightly with this part:
The ScanDisk tool included with Microsoft Windows 95 and Microsoft Windows 98 is a 16-bit program. Such programs have a single memory block maximum allocation size of 16 MB less 64 KB. Therefore, The Windows 95 or Windows 98 ScanDisk tool cannot process volumes using the FAT32 file system that have a FAT larger than 16 MB less 64 KB in size. A FAT entry on a volume using the FAT32 file system uses 4 bytes, so ScanDisk cannot process the FAT on a volume using the FAT32 file system that defines more than 4,177,920 clusters (including the two reserved clusters). Including the FATs themselves, this works out, at the maximum of 32 KB per cluster, to a volume size of 127.53 gigabytes (GB).
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Perhaps not so much directly disagree, but that paragraph is misleading. Note that it doesn't specifically mention Win98se or WinME. The AT FAQ on this subject seems to parrot the information in that MSKB article, but also implies that it applies to Win98se. From my own testing, the real-mode DOS Scandisk program has no problem operating on a single, 149GiB FAT32 partition. It takes nearly "forever", but it runs, with no errors. Also, the fact that the Scandisk program itself is "16-bit" really has absolutely nothing to do with it, as the MSKB erroneously implies.
 
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