windows 98 reports incorrect hard disk size.

[Computernorb]

I am having trouble with my current PC. My 40 Gig HDD is only being shown as 19.1 in windows. Fdisk and Bios both show it as 40 gig. I have checked for partitions and there are none. I have attempted to run scandisk and it keeps aborting as "an application is writing to the disk" No virus is found. It's not really a problem at the moment but when i run out of space it will be! If anyone can shed any light on this it would be great.

[bluedolphin]

I think it has something to do with the ability of the type of filing system on windows98 that wont let the full use of the drive capacity....I had a similar prob with winME...went back to the shop and was told as above.

[Kerplunk]

Try this patch:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows98/downloads/contents/WUReco mmended/S_WUFeatured/bigide/Default.asp

[j2buttonsw]

I am interested in you "I have checked for partitions and there are none". Should this be: "I have checked for additional partitions and there are none"? In other words, in fdisk you can see 1 active partition taking up 100% of the hard drive and is 40 GB in size? I am also interested in Kerplunk's answer as it is restricted to Phoenix BIOSes that do not use LBA when using scandisk. I think if you use scandisk in safe mode you wil not get errors. If your Windows is restricting the maximum size of partition to 20 GB (which I have not heard of) I suppose you could use partition magic to resize your original partition (to 20 GB) then create a second 20 GB partition.

[Computernorb]

Thanks for the input. J2Buttonsw is correct in his accurate description of my drive partitions - 1 with 100% useage. I have tried defraging and scandisk with no change. The Bios is set to Auto detect and correctly detect the drive as per the information physically printed on it. For information the drive is FAT32, LBA enabled.

[Computernorb]

Here is the latest twist in this saga. I have taken J2Buttonsw advice and attempted to reconfigure my HDD with 2 partititions (only through fdisk) but am unable to do so. As stated before fdisk shows correct size and partition information however on attempting to add a logical drive / partition I recieve a message to the effect of there being insufficient space. I have gone through the motions of deleting logical drives (just in case they weren't being reported properly through fdisk) and get the expected message of "no logical drives" or words to that effect. Next I will try partition magic and see what I come up with. If there are any more suggestions out there they would be appreciated.

[Computernorb]

O.K. I have run Partition magic. Just like magic my hard drive is back! Interestingly when I started PM my hard drive was identified as 39 gig with one only partition (100% useage) consisting of 9 gig used, 10 gig free. The other 20 gig was just lost somewhere. Hopefully someone can get something out of this. Thanks.

[j2buttonsw]

It may be that the master boot record (MBR) of the hard drive was corrupt and wrong and the PM fixed it.

[peanut]

are you sure 19.1 is not the available space you have left to use?