Formatting new hard drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Karen
  • Start date Start date
K

Karen

Here's the situation:

Have a Dell computer, several years old. Installed XP. In
a roundabout sort of way, that sort of necessitated
getting a new hard drive.

Existing drive (master) is 12GB (FAT). New drive (slave)
is 120GB (NFTS).

I got the drive physically installed OK and XP was
telling me that it was running just fine, but it didn't
show up in Windows Explorer.

Called Dell. Among the things they had me do was use the
resource disk that came with my computer (read: several
years old) and run FDISK -- for Windows 98.

Bottom line is it looks like the
formatting/partitioning/whatever they had me do has given
me access to about 32GB of my new drive, but the other
90GB are MIA.

I've got a sinking feeling that using the Win98 FDISK
program was not a good idea. Is there some way to undo
the partitioning/formatting and start from scratch so I
can use all 120GB of the new drive? I'd like all 120GB to
be assigned in one chunk, assigned to the same drive
letter.

The new drive is COMPLETELY empty, so I'm willing to do
anything that'll necessitate wiping it out.

(Dell is researching the issue and will be calling me
back in about 24 hours, but I'd like a second opinion.)
 
Karen,

You can use Windows XP to delete and recreate the drive's configuration any
way you want. I would first delete the existing 32gb partition, then create
a new 120gb partition and then do a full format of it as NTFS. It is only
showing you 32gb because that was the limit of the FAT32 file system.

--
Doug Allen
Windows 2000 MCSE
Microsoft Enterprise NT4/Win2k/XP/Win2k3 Setup Support

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
 
Thank you and Jupiter very much for your help! With the
info you've given me, I'm betting that once I get home
this evening I'll be able to have it all fixed before
Dell calls back.
-----Original Message-----
Karen,

You can use Windows XP to delete and recreate the drive's configuration any
way you want. I would first delete the existing 32gb partition, then create
a new 120gb partition and then do a full format of it as NTFS. It is only
showing you 32gb because that was the limit of the FAT32 file system.

--
Doug Allen
Windows 2000 MCSE
Microsoft Enterprise NT4/Win2k/XP/Win2k3 Setup Support

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and
Click to expand...
confers no rights.
 
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