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Stupid question, probably an easy answer

2K views 17 replies 5 participants last post by  rylenf 
#1 ·
Hey everyone, finally on my own computer!!!

Still wanting to learn though:

Heres the proplem, when i have a look at my C: drive and its capacity it states that it has a 502MB capacity and only 61MB left.\

The question is it is a 20GB hard drive, how do i retrieve the rest of the space?

Respond with any and all suggestions, and as always
your intelligence is appreciated


regards,
Rylenf
 
#2 ·
If you really do have a 20gb hard drive it isn't partitioned right, you can see if it is by typing fdisk in the run bar and selecting option 4. If there is space left you need to partition it using partition magic or another utility, remember to backup you data though.

Cheers
 
#5 ·
Apparently your BIOS isn't recognizing your 20GB drive... you may have to use the overlay software that should have been included with your hard drive when you bought it.
 
#7 ·
The defective drive didn't include overlay software?

You may be able to download the overlay from Maxtor's website...
 
#9 ·
With only 502mb capacity, it sounds to me like "large disc support" was not checked during the original format.

The overlay may not be needed. The should be used because of BIOS limitations.

How old is this machine? Processor, RAM, OS, etc..
 
#10 ·
Well actually last night i was trying some options,
and what i did was just erase the c: drive completely and ran fdisk from dos.
Once there i deleted the old partition and created a new one.
That seemed to work as the capacity changed from 502MB
to 8018MB
But that still is only making use of 8GB of the hard drive,
maybe some of you could enlighten me as to why this is.

hey acacandy
thnx
 
#11 ·
Isn't 8gig the next BIOS limit?

Again how old is this system? What OS etc.......
 
#12 ·
Download the floppy disk from Maxtor's website, save yourself the headache of trying to figure out whether the bios supports the drive or not. It will clearly let you know if it does or doesn't. At that point we can determine which route to take. Some of the folks around here don't care too much for the overlay program, myself, I've never had any troubles with it and have used it often on older systems. It beats risking a bad bios flash in my opinion ;)
 
#13 ·
answer to LONGHAIRS question,

::: this systems motherboard and processor is from circa 95'
the LG cdrom drive from 2000
128Mb ram added in 2002
20gb maxtor hard drive added in 2002 as well
I have installed win 98 os

Im starting to think this computers motherboard may not support a larger hard drive than it originally came with
I believe it was a 5GB originally.

::::Answer to AcaCandy;
Im downloading (an overlay program?) And should run and give me readings on what size my pc will support.

thnx everyone let me know your thoughts
 
#14 ·
I agree with Candy on this. I have no problem with overlays.
 
#15 ·
I had a 94 machine and it definitely needed an overlay, so I'm assuming that is the route we are going to have to take on this too.

Once you have the floppy created, boot with that, it will take over and start asking you questions. It pretty much will walk you thru the process. If you had a 20gig in it prior, it must have been set up that way too.
 
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