HDD Recognition Problem

[boo4842]

I took my old HD out of my old Computer. 120GB - 2 partitions (31GB) and (80GB)

I deleted the partitions (so I thought) and reinstalled windows, except it only recognised the 31GB. There was no mention of the other 80GB. I formatted the 31GB anyways, installed windows, and divided the 31GB into 10 and 20GB partitions, hoping I could see the other 80GB once windows was running.

Here I am, HD works fine, but only recognises the drive has 31GB in total. The drive is 120GB but the other 80 has just vanished. I'm almost out of space on the drive, and yet I know there is an extra 80Gb floating around somewhere.

Any thoughts on how to recover this, or even to format the whole HD so it will recognise the 120GB again? Is it possible that the 80GB portion is damaged, but the 31GB still works fine.

Any ideas are appreciated.

[talktwo]

right click on "My Computer"
Click on "Disk Management" then click "activate" or "format partition"

This is assuming that you actually have created a partition there.

Alternatively you could use Partition Magic for a more sure fire way :)

[boo4842]

Thanks,

I can't see it in disk manangement. It says the disk is 31GB total.

Originally I had the drive set up as a dynamic disk under XP Pro. As this is XP home, it can't read dynamic disks, so I'm wondering if that is the problem?

Any way I can test this without installing XP Pro?

[callous]

go to manufacturer's website and download their free utilities. Every company has a utility to create/format partitions.

[chdude3]

This condition is caused by the Award BIOS inability to address hard drives greater than 32GB. Award has been made aware of this issue and has fixed their "core" BIOS as of 6/99. They are passing this information along to the motherboard manufacturers' that use their BIOS. Updates for the BIOS should be available soon from individual motherboard manufacturers' to correct this problem.Are you using an older motherboard with an Award BIOS that has not been updated for a while?

[pandaharo]

Use partition magic. If it is really screwed up you may need to do a low level format.

When you said you deleted both partitions and installed windows, did you recreate the 31gb partition or was it just there?

[boo4842]

Use partition magic. If it is really screwed up you may need to do a low level format.

When you said you deleted both partitions and installed windows, did you recreate the 31gb partition or was it just there?

When it said to delete partitions and format the drive I clicked yes. I ddi not create the 31 GB partition.

I will see if I can get my hands on partition magic. Thx for your help

[v00d00]

to format a partition you would have to create it first.. so it sounds like you deleted the 80gig partition, but didn't delete the 30gig partition.. instead just formatted it.

So that 80gigs is still there, it's just never been created as a usuable partition.

[netrat]

if you don't have any important data, here is ONE method.

Grab a windows 98 disk. boot up with it into dos prompt.
type > "fdisk"
say yes to large capacity
remove every single partition you can find. make sure every single one is removed. the menu system is self explainatory.
once you have that, change the window 98 to window xp disk
boot up.
create a partition for windows (i find 10gig is sufficient)
you can also create OTHER partitions during this process, just make sure when it comes time to installing the OS, pick the correct partition

wait 30min-1hr for installation
if you already preallocated your partitions during windows xp set up. open windows explorer right click on D:, E:.... etc and format them. after you format them, they'll be ready to use.

!@#$ if you didn't preallocate the space partition during installation process
goto control panel > Performance and Maintancen > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management

You'll find rectangular box. right click the "Free space" > new logical drive

allocate your spacing. once you're done that, reboot, and do the formating thingie i mentioned earlier.

** you can always try to do the !@#$ part first if you like. if you still don't see your free space, do the fdisk thing. do fdisk ONLY if you don't have any data to back up. once you fdisk, you're basically removing everything on your hd permanently unless you do some data recovery thing.

... well that's just my quick guide. i just finished doing those steps just yesturday after i bought a used hd (it had a whole bunch of 2gig partitions, and missing space.. i gues the previous owner didn't know what to do with it.. and just sold it off cheaply). everything is working perfectly... for me. hopefully it'll work for you.

note: don't use fdisk to format the disk, you'll only be able to allocate 10gig max. use windows xp installation, or windows xp itself.

[goofball]

note: don't use fdisk to format the disk, you'll only be able to allocate 10gig max. use windows xp installation, or windows xp itself.

Fdisk can do much more than 10GB. Maybe you have an extremely old version of FDISK.


Try this:

-Open disk management
-actions -> rescan disks.

this may initialize the dynamic volume again.