HELP NEEDED- my computer limits my 40gb hdd to 2.5gb!

E

easuter

New Member
hey guys,

first time i post here, i have an old computer at home that i decided to revamp and donate to charity, here are the specs:

-m/b: DataExpert exp8661 (amibio 1995 i think)
-Intel Pentium 166MHZ (doing overclocking to 200mhz)
-8x cd reader
-64mb ram (4x 16mb SIMM EDO modules)
- 2.55gb western digital caviar hdd

so, i have a 40gb seagate hdd, and i was thinking of putting it into this old, but still fully functional machine, to maybe give it a last boost.

however, when i tryed to install win98 on it, it said that the hdd was non-exixtent or not in a compatible FAT format.

so i used fdisk and repartitioned it, but then it limited my 40gb to only 2.5! it doesnt make any sense.

i suspect it might be because the bios might be out of date or the dos version doesnt suppor LARGE config hdd, but icant seem to find any sollution, after spending hours on google.

so u guys are my saviour (i hope). :)

i'd realy much appreciate any suggestion/sollutions.

eugene


ps: i will pass on any coment you make about trying to squeeze the last ounce of strength out of this old machine. :D
 
Thats an ooold computer so yes the bios probably only has a 2.5 gig (that used to be huge lol) limit. You can probably do something to increase the limit but I dont know.
 
The BIOS of the computer will not recognize the new 40 Gb HD.
Try if you can find a BIOS update.

If my memory serves me correct Windows 98 has it's limitation also, I just can't recall how much Gb it can recognize. I had a similar problem before and had used Win ME boot disk to partition the drive.
 
I know what happened...when u repartitioned the drive, (using wind 98???), you only partitioned 2.5 gb of the hard drive. the other 37 gb are unused because the computer is only working in the 2.5 gb hard drive space. my friend had the exact same problem. If you call seagate...the number is on the hard drive....they will tell you how to partition the hard drive either through windows 98 or through dos.....their tech support is free for this....so give em a call...i know how to partition it through xp..but i dont think that is going to help you and i havent used windows 98 for.....well.....since 1998 :)
 
thanx for the help

hey guys,

well, i was suspicious about the bios at first because:

-i used my good computer (P4 2.66ghz 1gbram hdd40gb 7200rpm), to format the hard drive to fat32 using max space.

i used the old fdisk program on a win98 boot disk and worked fine, but when i transfer the hdd to that old machine, and run fdisk for information on the hdd, it tells me that it has an unknown file system. so it has to be the old one's problem.

now, i have tryed to get my hands on a bios update, but to no aveil, unless of course i pay $40 (but i guess its not worth the bother is it?).

about windows having hdd size limits, yes i know: win95 is limited to 32gb when running with a patch provided by microsoft.

win98 has a limit of 137gb! so no problem of the operarting system.

anyhow, i'l phone seagate asap, te see what they have up their sleeve and try to get a bios update.

thanx guys for the help.

ttyl
 
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You may also have been using an old version of Fdisk, which can limit the drive size to 2Gb (fat16)
 
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