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HELP OUT A BEGINNER !! I have just put a Western Digital 15 gig IDE drive into a friends system. I used FDisk to create a single DOS partition.I then formated the drive. Fdisk says its only 8000 odd meg. Whats gone wrong - i told it to support large H/D's and to maximise the space on the disk. Could it be the age of the motherboard - i don't have the specs handy but its at least 4 1/2 yrs old running a P166. Any (sensible) suggestions would be greatly apprecialted.
You could check for an updated bios flash for your motherboard, or you can use a disk manager like EZ Drive, You might have gotten that disk with your hard drive, if not go to www.westerndigital.com and download it.
http://www.westerndigital.com/service/ftp/drives.html
Here's a better link.
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An obstacle is something you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
[This message has been edited by Eagle PC Diagnostech (edited January 13, 2001).]
Many times there is a specific jumper on the HD limiting it to 8GB because of system board limitations and WesternDigital is usually one to set it by default. https://forums.windrivers.com/
Option #1 (Easiest): Use the "EZ Drive" utility provided by Western Digital to allow the motherboard to see the larger drive partition. Visit their website for more information:
http://www.westerndigital.com
Option #2: You could flash the BIOS on the motherboard; however, the motherboard must support this feature.
Hope this helps!
K.
What?? I've installed thousands of WD's and am quite certain no such jumper exists. Why on earth would WD sell a 15Gb Drive and then factory jumper it so that only 8Gb was usable? If you're going to make a wild guess at least admit you're only guessing.Quote:
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, Geneva, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by homerj:
Many times there is a specific jumper on the HD limiting it to 8GB because of system board limitations and WesternDigital is usually one to set it by default. https://forums.windrivers.com/ </font>
IBM Desktar drives have a 32GB clip that locks it at 32GB (I have a 46GB). Doubtful that this drive has that though, I am pretty sure the BIOS needs updating, and also pretty sure that that won't help anyway. That board will probably only read it as 8GB, but if u can live with that, just set it up as such. EZBIOS would solve the issue, but can open up a can of worms later.
why not partition to smaller sizes, splitting up the 15gb into 2 or 3 drives?? remember that larger partitions have larger cluster sizes and (depending upon your eventual useage - i.e. lots of small files) lots of "wasted space".....
I use separate partitions for games, serious progs, data, and o/s... it works and backups are easier.
just my five eggs.
There is also the hardware solution, a bios overlay card or a controller card. I have had mostly good luck with Promise cards.
http://www.promise.com/
But there are other manufacturers, as well.
If your 15GB drive is an ATA66 item, the card option would probably give you the advantage of being able to utilize the drive's faster speed, in addition to its greater size.