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Thread ID: 33218 2003-05-11 01:58:00 HDD size Chris Randal (521) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
143056 2003-05-11 01:58:00 Having just purchased an upgrade and paid for a 20GB hard drive, I find that, using Windows 98SE, the system says that I have only 1.99GB.

Have I been ripped off or will W98SE only accept 2GB?

Thanks in advance for your help
Chris Randal (521)
143057 2003-05-11 02:09:00 sounds like you have formatted with fat16 instead of fat32. next time choose "large drive support" (i think....i don't use ms fdisk/format anymore) tweak'e (174)
143058 2003-05-11 02:12:00 It will be the file system you are using
Seeing as you had a 1.99GB HDD Before, your file system would be FAT, and Windows wouldn't have worried about using FAT32. The problem is that the FAT File System only supports drives up to 2GB in size, whereas FAT32 supports 20GB and larger...

Click Start > Settings Control panel > Add/Remove Programs
Click on the Windows Setup tab
Navigate to Systems Tools > Driver Converter (FAT32)

Then you can go to Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools and convert your drive to FAT32



CyberChuck
cyberchuck (173)
143059 2003-05-11 02:18:00 Do I lose anything when I do that, or is everything saved on the disk? Chris Randal (521)
143060 2003-05-11 02:18:00 good point.....i forgot about the fat32 converter. however if that dosn't fix it it may be because the old drive is "ghosted" over to the new drive and the partion size is set at 2g. you should be able to add more partitons on (don't use fdisk tho). tweak'e (174)
143061 2003-05-11 02:20:00 personally i would make sure everything is backed up then repartiton the drive and format it all the partitions with fat32. tweak'e (174)
143062 2003-05-11 05:30:00 Okay firstly yes vfat or fat16 [which isnt exactly fat16 but vfat] on some versions of windows does have a limitation of 2GB approximately.

It is 4gb with NT4 and some other versions with different file system implementation.

With Fat32 you should be able to use the majority of the size of the drive.

You can save data, delete then recreate the partitions if you desire.

Optionally software can be used to convert the file system and change the partition sizes.

A professional program from this is www.powerquest.com 'Partition magic'

A listing for partition software:
dmoz.org

Example free version which may or may not meet your needs:
http://www.zeleps.com/
Captive (3159)
143063 2003-05-11 05:32:00 Please also note if you are not presented with a Large disk support option from your boot/instal disk or other disk which containes FDISK you may have a version, such as an older version or non standard version which does not support larger partition sizes or in other words FAT32 Captive (3159)
143064 2003-05-11 05:53:00 So what's the answer - do I lose everything or not when I convert to FAT32? Chris Randal (521)
143065 2003-05-11 05:58:00 When you convert to fat32 you will not lose the data typically, and in every instance i have had

However the tools that come with windows natively do not allow partiton resizing.
Captive (3159)
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