Northy
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| posted on 29/1/05 at 10:45 AM |
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Hard drive formatting
Hi all,
I've a little problem. Some time ago I bought an 80gig hard drive for a then full pc. When I fitted it, due to a limitation in the bios it could
only 'see' about 37gigs of it. So I took it ut and its been sat in a box for a while.
I've just built up a much newer pc with XP on it using this drive, and when XP did its 'I want to change this drive to NTFS' thing
it only did about 37gig of it. I installed Partition Magic 6 last night and it sees the rest as 'unallocated' but can't seem to do
anything with it.
Can anyone help? I could do with an extra 43gig!
Cheers
G
Graham
Website under construction. Help greatfully received as I don't really know what I'm doing! 
"If a man says something in the woods and there are no women there, is he still wrong?"
Built 2L 8 Valve Vx Powered Avon
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Hellfire
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| posted on 29/1/05 at 10:50 AM |
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I'd just reformat and start again - but then I have limited knowledge!
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scoobyis2cool
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| posted on 29/1/05 at 10:53 AM |
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If you don't mind losing all the data on the drive and have the windows XP disc, you could try the following:
Go into the Windows installation program by putting the CD in at boot-up (you may need to change the settings to boot from the CD drive).
On the drive that isn't workin properly, delete all the partitions so that all the space is unallocated.
Add a new partition that uses all this space (it won't let you use quite all of it but it won't be far off).
You then need to format this partition. I can't remember if you can do this through the windows installation without installing windows. The
other option is to format the drive through Windows by right clicking on the drive in My Computer and selecting format.
That's all I can remember off the top of my head, I spent a day last week formatting drives and installing windows etc so I hope I've
remembered it correctly!
Pete
It's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care...
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flak monkey
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| posted on 29/1/05 at 12:12 PM |
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I use PM8 and its a very useful tool. AFAIK PM6 will only recognise drives upto 80Gb so you are lucky there.
If you dont want to reformat do the following:
Make the boot disks for PM, insert the first one and reboot. Foloow onscreen prompts.
You will come to PM in DOS, but dont worry the mouse will work.
Right click on the unallocated space and there will be a list of options. One of which will be something like create partition or format.
Choose format and select NTFS and type in a name.
Click OK and you will be away.
If you want to reformat you hard drive, right click the active partition (will probably be pink or something) and click delete partition. Your hdd
will then be one big partition.
Right click on the partition and if its going to be bootable (ie has windows on it) select create primary partition. Choose NTFS and type a name,
click ok and youre done.
Reboot with windows cd in drive, foolow XP installer.
Simple enough,
If you need more help just say.
Cheers,
David
Sera
http://www.motosera.com
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Peteff
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| posted on 29/1/05 at 12:42 PM |
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Go to the drive manufacturers website. They all list free software to help maintain and repair their products and most are easy to use, like the
Maxblast and Seatools utilities. They also help set up the drive for reinstallation a lot quicker than the dos software from microsoft.
yours, Pete
I went into the RSPCA office the other day. It was so small you could hardly swing a cat in there.
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britishtrident
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| posted on 30/1/05 at 02:12 PM |
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I have seen this before only way round it was to delete the partition and start afresh.
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flak monkey
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| posted on 31/1/05 at 11:54 AM |
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On partition magic it is possible to combine partitions. Its not guaranteed to work, but it usually does.
David
Sera
http://www.motosera.com
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britishtrident
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| posted on 31/1/05 at 01:59 PM |
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quote:
Originally posted by flak monkey
On partition magic it is possible to combine partitions. Its not guaranteed to work, but it usually does.
David
Unlikely to work because the problem stems from the drive geometry not being recognised properly on the first PC.
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