Solved: Fdisk Partitioning

I want to "successfully" reformat & reinstall operating system on a custom built machine. The problem I am having is it is only using 540 mb of the drive when I install instead of the 2.4 gb the drive actually is. I tried another hard drive and it was 6 gb and only loaded 540 mb as well. What do I need to do to get the system to install correctly? I chose yes when the question came up about larger partitions. Please advise. Is there something in the BIOS I'm missing or am I doing something wrong in FDISK.

 

You need to start over and delete all partitions (in case it's made small one) http://fdisk.radified.com/

 

How old is this PC? It may very well be a BIOS limitation if it is a dinosaur. Get a copy of FDISK and FORMAT and put them on a system formatted diskette. Boot to the diskette and run FDISK and option 4 to look at the current partition setup. Post back your findings.

 

The PC is old. C: 1 PRI DOS 503MB System unknow usage 100%

I think you are right (limitation) explains why I can't change this problem regardless of the hard drive I put in it, however, since a 2.6 gb drive worked in it before there must be a way around this limitation. Any ideas?

 

Hi,

You may find that a hard disk drive overlay program will trick your BIOS into allowing you to use the full size of the hard disk.

Most hard disk manufacturers have these, or look at http://www.ontrack.com

http://www.fcpa.com/support/hard-drives/software_utilities.html

scroll down to the bottom of the page.

Best place to start would be the web site for the hard disk

hth

Ceri