[n65uk]

Hiya,

The hard drive in my work computer went bust, no data could be recovered, and since the company is cutting back on resources, we have no IT technical support. So I was left to do this on my own. No problem, my field of work is not computers (its engineering) but did a computer college course.

I went out and bought a new hard drive, 60GB IDE. Plugged in, the install of Windows 98 was perfect, no problems (besides the drivers, which I have cured by downloading them from Asus).

However, I noticed the drive is stuck at limited to 1.99GB (2GB essentially). I knew this was the FAT16 -> FAT32 issue, so used the built-in converter, which said it all went fine. Logging back in, the drive is indeed FAT32, but is still stuck to 1.99GB. I thought the conversion would have cured that?

The only other way I know is to wipe the drive, reinstall and make sure during the Windows 98 Install, I choose "Large Drive Support". But I dont want to do that because I have stuff back on here.

Also, I know Windows 98 is not supported anymore, but this is not the issue - it has to be Windows 98 as the software used in work works with 95 & 98 only.
Thoughts anybody?

Thanks.

Edited by n65uk, 31 January 2009 - 07:04 AM.

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Hello,

I know of no way to fix this in Win98. In other words, you will have to fdisk/format the drive again and reinstall. You may as well download the latest fdisk from HERE. Also, I don't know how you actually formatted the drive as fdisk does support up to 64gb drives with no problem. In any case, HERE is a tutorial on how to setup your drive using fdisk.

[makai]

Hello,

I know of no way to fix this in Win98. In other words, you will have to fdisk/format the drive again and reinstall. You may as well download the latest fdisk from HERE. Also, I don't know how you actually formatted the drive as fdisk does support up to 64gb drives with no problem. In any case, HERE is a tutorial on how to setup your drive using fdisk.

[Neil Jones]

I went out and bought a new hard drive, 60GB IDE. Plugged in, the install of Windows 98 was perfect, no problems (besides the drivers, which I have cured by downloading them from Asus).

However, I noticed the drive is stuck at limited to 1.99GB (2GB essentially). I knew this was the FAT16 -> FAT32 issue, so used the built-in converter, which said it all went fine. Logging back in, the drive is indeed FAT32, but is still stuck to 1.99GB. I thought the conversion would have cured that?

It sounds like you've made a partition using FDisk and set it up from a Windows 95 or earlier version, because FDisk under Windows 98 does not use FAT16 in any way, shape or form, and FAT16 is indeed limited to 2Gb per partition.

That being said, FDisk will handle any size drive you care to show it, though cosmetically wise it'll wrap around after 64Gb, hence why an 80Gb drive claims to be 10Gb. But I don't think this is the issue.

The converter simply converts the file system. It won't enlarge the partition size - for that you'll need something like Partition Magic.

Edited by Neil Jones, 01 February 2009 - 05:02 AM.