60gig really 100gigs?

[Lycia]

I was having probs with Easy CD Creator and WinXP in addition to some other types of errors, so I decided to reintall...

I have an IBM 60GXP 60gig drive...partitioned to 1 3 gig for WinXP, 1 55 gig for data, and 1 gig for swapfile.

I fdisk and delte 3 gig part. I go back to fdisk and remake 3gig. I format C: /S...half way through, I notice it's formating to 54 gigs!! OMG, I say, I've lost everything!! WAUGH!! tons of Porn down the drain!! (JK!!) I hadn't yet backed up to second PC!! ok, I suck it up and prepare to refdisk everything...but wiat..I remove drive and stuff it into second computer and guess what? I now have a 100gig drive!!

In My Computer, it shows the other three SCSI drives, then it shows my IBM as I an G drive. I is the former D drive with all my files and crap..G is the newly formated drive, blank as a fart. Yet I shows as a 55gig partition and G shows as a 54gig partition with a third 500mb partition.. :confused:

I made several temp files and folder and copied them over sa well as copying some other stuff, through it all it said I had over 100gigs on this IBM drive..

Anyone ever seen that?

[shamus]

Could the MBR be bad?

[MacGyver]

Sounds like the FAT is corrupted. I've seen 100MB drives reported as 4GIG after a virus has trashed a FAT. But nothing like your situation.

Call IBM?

[Mayhem]

I haven't had a lot of experience with XP but I know with older versions of fdisk you would need to reboot after deleting the partion and again after setting up the new partition in order for it to work right.

Just a thought, something to try.

[Lycia]

[quote]Originally posted by *MAYHEM*:
<strong>I haven't had a lot of experience with XP but I know with older versions of fdisk you would need to reboot after deleting the partion and again after setting up the new partition in order for it to work right.

Just a thought, something to try.</strong><hr></blockquote>


Yeah I rebooted several times...The fdisk was off an old win95b bootdisk with large drive support...besides I only use it to make the first 3 gig partition, preferring to use 2K/XP's diskmanagement tool...


remember I rebooted several times, and even hooked to my spare machine...and through it all it reported 2 50gig+ partition and one 500mb partition

[techleet]

Why would you use FAT32 with XP? NTFS is superior in every friggin way you can name. (except for Win98 compat.)

[freddy]

[quote]Originally posted by techleet:
<strong>Why would you use FAT32 with XP? NTFS is superior in every friggin way you can name. (except for Win98 compat.)</strong><hr></blockquote>


ok , not going to start a NTFS v FAT32 arguament , but: buissness use might be, prob is better ,,,,but home use , i wonder?

senario:

d/load bios upgrade , firmware upgrade , anti virus prog etc, all to be run from a DOS prompt.

very easy (exc bios maybe) to just d/load and unzip to a directory , then chuck your faithful 98 cd in type c: cd\wherever\go. and its done.

detest....hate.....loathe floppys prefer to leave the progs on h/d and then delete after.

there again in "home" use do we need all the extra security of NTFS. and I still question any speed difference between them (with h/drives being so large nowerdays) cluster size is not a prob.

[Hippie_Tech_Too]

Isn't there a file size difference with FAT32 vs. NTFS? Meaning: doesn't FAT32 have a size limitation of 2 or 4GB for a single file which makes video editing on a FAT32 hard drive rather difficult with the larger files? I heard that somewhere.

On topic, I have seen a virus of unknown origin show a hard drive having over 1TB of drive space. In actuality it was only a 4GB hard drive. It had all the goofy character file names and some of the files were over 100GB in size according to the FAT. :cool:

[Matridom]

Lycia, I don't know if you fixed your issue or not. I would however think that since you canceled your format at mid stage that it screwed up your FAT table has mac suggested. I would low level the sucker and recreat the partitions. BTW, if your botting of the drive, the extra partition for the swap file will slow the OS down(your actuator arm needs to move to a new section of the drive then back often). Move the swap file to a seperate hard disk (a special partition on that drive would be OK) or put it on your boot partition. Another option is to span the swap file across several hard disks (this being even better)

[Stalemate]

[quote]Originally posted by Matridom:
<strong>... Move the swap file to a seperate hard disk (a special partition on that drive would be OK) or put it on your boot partition. Another option is to span the swap file across several hard disks (this being even better)</strong><hr></blockquote>

I presently have my swap file on the boot partition also - not a seperate partition.

But I'm wondering what the benefits would be to "span" the swap file across multiple HDs.

Can someone explain the advantage of doing this?

[freddy]

[quote]Originally posted by Hippie_Tech_Too:
<strong>Isn't there a file size difference with FAT32 vs. NTFS? Meaning: doesn't FAT32 have a size limitation of 2 or 4GB for a single file which makes video editing on a FAT32 hard drive rather difficult with the larger files? I heard that somewhere.

On topic, I have seen a virus of unknown origin show a hard drive having over 1TB of drive space. In actuality it was only a 4GB hard drive. It had all the goofy character file names and some of the files were over 100GB in size according to the FAT. :cool: </strong><hr></blockquote>


yes DVD,s have a max of 1g hence several vob files on a DVD , as such this does not affect fat32 or ntfs.

on the subject of formating the drive , there was an article on this forum (to which i asked questions) RE: size limitations of format command in 95/98/me xp/2k and it was the concensus that u had to use the latter to sort sa disk 60 -> ,,,don,t know if this sheds some ligh.

was,nt 95 fat 16 and the option to convert to fat32 in the 98 series ?


freddy

[Matridom]

[quote]Originally posted by a d e p t:
<strong>

I presently have my swap file on the boot partition also - not a seperate partition.

But I'm wondering what the benefits would be to "span" the swap file across multiple HDs.

Can someone explain the advantage of doing this?</strong><hr></blockquote>

The advantage to spanning it across several hard disks is that your in essence putting it on a very basic raid array. say you have half on one drive, and half on a second drive, when your accessing the swap, you may pick up files on one drive, and the rest on the second, allowing you to read both sections simultaniously.

[Stalemate]

So I'm assuming better efficiency could also be gained by using disks which are located on different IDE/SCSI cables then.

Thanks for the info!

[Lycia]

[quote]Originally posted by techleet:
<strong>Why would you use FAT32 with XP? NTFS is superior in every friggin way you can name. (except for Win98 compat.)</strong><hr></blockquote>

YOU need to get out more...There are a few reason why I am using Fat32 on the C partition.

[Lycia]

[quote]Originally posted by Matridom:
<strong>Lycia, I don't know if you fixed your issue or not. I would however think that since you canceled your format at mid stage that it screwed up your FAT table has mac suggested. I would low level the sucker and recreat the partitions. BTW, if your botting of the drive, the extra partition for the swap file will slow the OS down(your actuator arm needs to move to a new section of the drive then back often). Move the swap file to a seperate hard disk (a special partition on that drive would be OK) or put it on your boot partition. Another option is to span the swap file across several hard disks (this being even better)</strong><hr></blockquote>


Sorry, that's a misunderstanding, Half way through I noticed that it was making a 50gig partition. At that point I was like Oh ****e, well there's nothing I can do but let it finish..which I did. So, while the drive was connected to my second pc, I copied over all my games and utilities folders. None of which contained any weird or odd sized files/folders...after everything was copied, I put the drive back in main machine, removed all partitions and remade them using fdisk to 3gig FAT32 Cdrive, 54 gig D and 1 gig E.

I think I will try your advice of spanning. The separate partiton for the swapfile was made based on some info I picked up..but it's never really show me any improvement...I will use PM7 to merge it to my 3 gig. Thanks for the advice..

AS of now, the 60 gig is performing as intended...wierd

[Matridom]

Glad to hear things worked out.