120gb hdd down to 32gb

[Ric]

hi, first time poster here

I've got a 120gb, which had 3 patitions with windows 98 and xp and another partition for storage.

I formatted the drive and erased all partitions, using maxblast 3. In maxblast I also partitioned the drive again, and was being read as a 120gb hdd. But when i rebooted and checked the bios it said the drive was only 32 or 33gb, also when installing windows it also only shows 32 gb.

I've tried writing zeros to the drive and having only 1 partition but it still reads 32gb. I also tried it in another pc as a slave and it still reads 32gb within windows xp and bios

I know it doesnt need bios flashing as it was reading it properly before the format, and ive tried it in other pcs.

Does anyone know what could be wrong?

 

[Gary Graefen]

yea your particianing is incorrect- its generally better to partician using fdisk in windows 98 format to a 32 bit fat and the do your xp drive as an ntfs if you choose to later. Though I prefer a 32 bit fat its easier to restore in the event of a crash. Fdisk just requires a little bit of paying attension and knowing the use of dos. you can access fdisk by booting from your 98 cd tell the system to boot from cd with cd rom support. at the dos prompt type d:\ <enter> cd win98<enter> then type fdisk<enter> and follow the prompts

 

[Ric]

yea your particianing is incorrect- its generally better to partician using fdisk in windows 98 format to a 32 bit fat and the do your xp drive as an ntfs if you choose to later. Though I prefer a 32 bit fat its easier to restore in the event of a crash. Fdisk just requires a little bit of paying attension and knowing the use of dos. you can access fdisk by booting from your 98 cd tell the system to boot from cd with cd rom support. at the dos prompt type d:\ <enter> cd win98<enter> then type fdisk<enter> and follow the prompts

yeah i've tried fdisk, and it doesnt help, still shows 33gb

 

[Gary Graefen]

I should have asked the age of your computer-older units won't reconize large drives-but windows will. If you install windows and boot up-you might see the extra space.

 

[Ric]

I should have asked the age of your computer-older units won't reconize large drives-but windows will. If you install windows and boot up-you might see the extra space.

well they are new pc's and they where reading the size correctly before the format, in bios and windows xp. I've checked the size in win xp and its still incorrect.

This is all very odd