to be or not to be

[ataxy]

ok here is the punch salvaged 486dx2 maxtor hd in the bios it tell me 1612mb in windows it tell me 503mb i have seen variaton in a hd total memory between the bios and window but 1gig thats a lot dont you think i mean 550mb and 503mb i would understand but 1gig i did verify the hd surface and no problem there is there a catch

 

[Diggrr]

Did you try looking at the drive partitions using fdisk (reboot into DOS) or Partition Magic (purchased Windows program)? It sounds like you have a partition that's not showing up, maybe it's made with a non-standard software.

I'd try rebooting with a boot disk that has the fdisk program on it. Type fdisk to run it, then choose the command "view partition information" This should show you all the available space on the harddrive. If it doesn't you might have to start over using Maxtor's install program on their website.

 

[ataxy]

i did and

with fdisk it also tell me that it is 503mb so i guess it is 503 but i do not understand why my bios tell me it 1612mb and maxtor dont have anymore info on that hd sooooooooooooo i guess it might be a mistery like the caramilk

 

[David]

If you can, try to create an Extended partition - it may be that the drive is 1600MB but not all of it is used for partitions. Let us know what happens.

 

[turd]

540 thats the magic number for a lot of those old systems, but you are getting detected in the bios, download the maxtor drive utilities, from their webpage and check that disk and install the ezbios overlay and format with the maxiblast, see what you get

 

[AarontheJC]

Turd has the problem down exactly. I had the same problem in my Win98 systems, and downloading the utils from the maker's website and using them to partition always corrected the mis-reads in Win98.