Hard drive full capacity

[DREEMTHEEF]

Thanks for reading.

I know this works as I’ve done it a number of times but I’m curious as to what exactly is being changed.

You have a new computer system with a (for example) 60Gb hard drive.
When you run the windows start up floppy only 32Gb of the hard drive capacity is recognized.
If you continued to install the OS, you would be left with only 32Gb of the hard drive’s capacity.

However if I install the 60Gb hard drive, as a slave, in a different computer, running windows and then run a program called Disk Manager 2000, I can format the 60Gb drive and install it as storage and I get the full 60 capacity of the hard drive.

I can then remove the drive and install it into the new computer system and then install the OS. The full 60Gb capacity of the hard drive is recognized.

I was wondering exactly what is being changed here, as at first I thought it was the BIOS of the computer that does the formatting of the 60Gb drive, the one running Disk Manager 2000 but if I’m then removing the hard drive and putting it into a different computer, that has no OS and has therefore not had Disk Manager 2000 ran on it, there is no way the BIOS could have been altered in any way.

Is the hard drive firmware being altered in some way?

….DreeM

 

[roadworker]

AFAIK,this only happens with some older bios',usually a bios upgrade fixes it......if there's no update/upgrade available,you can check the support page of your harddisk manufacturer for a diskutil to fix it.....

 

[Duracell]

When you run the windows start up floppy only 32Gb of the hard drive capacity is recognized.

maybe the contained fdisk can't recognize more than 32 GB;
try to boot from your W2k CD, the disk partitioner during setup should see the full 60 GB; also you can use a 3rd party partitioning software like Acronis PartitionExpert;

you mentioned in another thread a system upgrade, so your new MB/BIOS should not be the problem;


Greetings from
Duracell

 

[roadworker]

Re: Re: Hard drive full capacity

maybe the contained fdisk can't recognize more than 32 GB;

That's not really important.....fdisk will format the full harddisk,when windows (98 or up) is installed,it will recognise the full capacity of the harddisk...I think up to 137 gig without probs or 3th party software or drivers.....

 

[Lister]

i have 2x 120 gig drives both running on 98se

could be the fdisk there was one

partmagic would be way round it but can be kinda slow to do all jobs

found some info on fdisk

_http://www3.sympatico.ca/rhwatson/dos7/u-fdisk.html

_http://members.bellatlantic.net/~mrscary/fdisk.htm fix on here

 

[weboneando]

There must be some kind of limitation (older version or something) in your startup disk, wich OS is your disk?

If you have Diskmanager 2000 you should be able to do a boot disk wich will let you install directly in any pc.

 

[DREEMTHEEF]

Thanks for the feedback so far but I think perhaps you have the wrong end of the stick.

I built a computer system for a customer, from scratch except I told the customer I would use what ever parts from their old system I could. It turned out they had a rather crap system but had a very nice 7200 speed hard drive. When I opened their system up, the hard drive was clipped at 32Gb, using the jumpers on the back of the hard drive. Before I pulled their system apart I did power it up and the hard drive was recognized as a 32Gb.
The hard drive was in fact a 60Gb capacity drive.

The program Disk Manager 2000 can produce a floppy boot disk to enable you to get the full capacity of a hard drive but it only works with IBM hard drives, this one was a Seagate Barracuda. In order for me to get the full 60Gb, I put the jumper on the back of the hard drive to slave and then I had to attach the hard drive to my own computer system as a slave, ran Disk Manager 2000 and format the Seagate Barracuda as a storage drive. When I had done this my own system saw the hard drive as a 60Gb.

I could then remove the hard drive (the Seagate) from my own system, put the jumper to master and put it back into the customer’s newly built system. This system, which didn’t even have an OS yet saw the hard drive as the full 60Gb when I used the windows 98 boot floppy and once I had installed the OS (they needed windows 2000 pro), windows also saw the Seagate Barracuda as a 60Gb hard drive.

My question is….

As I’m doing all the work on my own computer system but then removing the hard drive and installing it into a brand new system, what is being changed to give the full capacity of the hard drive, as the only item common to both my own system and the newly built system is the Seagate Barracuda hard drive, which leads me to think the firmware on the hard drive is being altered in some way, as none of the work to get the full capacity of the hard drive is being done on the customer’s newly built system but on my own system.

Hope this clears things up a bit and I look forward to your feedback.
I know this method works as I’ve done it a number of times, without a hitch.

….DreeM

 

[weboneando]

he program Disk Manager 2000 can produce a floppy boot disk to enable you to get the full capacity of a hard drive but it only works with IBM hard drives

You´re using the version provided by IBM, get to Ontrack site and there you´ll find the complete version that can be used with any drive.

As HD got bigger some manufacturers have made drives that has the ability to change (limit) the number of sectors or heads used, this is to help older machines to recognize the drive altough it reduces the drive size, this is done by jumper settings so if you moved the jumper settings in the drive to put it in your systems this is probably the case with your drive, to check this you can get to Seagate site and look for jumper setting for your specific drive.

Jumper settings can be checked also with Diskmanager, it has an option at the menu that displays a list with drive models and selecting each one it presents a graphic with jumper settings, I don´t remember right now tha name of that option but I´ll post it later.