-=PCTechTalk=- Re: Finding disk space
- From: "ds" <dschilling@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <pctechtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 26 Jul 2002 23:19:51 -0500
Thanks. That appears to have worked. I neglected to mention that I
recently replaced the motherboard so the BIOS could now recognize larger
drives. I downloaded the software from IBM and was able to recover the
disk space. It was actually quite simple.
But I have another question. I partitioned a part of the drive for
Windows, which shows as Drive C. Part of the drive is formatted for
Linux and part for the Linux swap file. However, those parts of the
drive did not map to a drive letter. Is this normal?
Denise
Denise, if your motherboard / BIOS is old then it will need some help to
"see" the whole drive.
There are 2 ways to do this:
1 - Normally the drive comes with the DDO (Dynamic Drive Overlay)
software and it sounds like in your case that it was not installed
and/or configured properly. You could install it but you should back up
whatever is on the drive that you need to keep
first because you will need to partition and format the drive afterward.
If you didn't get it go to IBM's website and download it. While your
there get the doc's too and PRINT them.
2 - This option may be more appealing, but is usually slightly more
expensive, but, in my eyes a much better method. Obtain (order, or get
from local store) a Promise Technologies 133mb IDE drive controller,
pick the model that's appropriate for your
motherboards card slots. This controller will have it's own NEW - BIOS
built on it and will handle drives with capacities much larger then
currently available. The nice thing here is this controller is very fast
and there is NO need for the DDO software.
The controller should be available for around $12 to say $45, depending
on the model you need. I actually have one in this machine, it was part
of the Maxtor drive kit. Very fast. You might double check with IBM,
they might have a suitable controller
available at a reasonable cost. Note: You will need to re-partition and
format with this method also.
Method 2 will yield faster drive throughput and is really the better way
to go. Just make sure there is NO DDO software installed on the drive.
In some situations you might get away without having to re-partition and
format the drive but they would be rare
and possibly everything may look good until you or a program went to
write to the higher areas of the drive and then things might get
corrupted thus I always recommend partitioning and formatting and
installing everything from scratch whenever a drives
controller / BIOS is changed. Method 1 is the least expensive and could
possibly be implemented immediately and is a satisfactory method for
most users.
Good Luck
-Jim-
ds wrote:
>
> This is an old problem, which I had to put aside until now. I had a 60
> Gb hard drive put on an older computer (circa 1998) by the PC hardware
> department at the school I go to. They had trouble getting my computer
> to recognize the drive and I don't know what was finally done to make
it
> work. Originally, there were two drives on the computer. I took one
off
> and now there is only the 60 Gb. But it only sees 30 Gb. I'd like to
get
> it to see the entire drive.
>
> I thought perhaps there was some type of drive overlay on it that
needed
> to be removed; however, Master Netlord suggested that I put Partition
> Magic on it and try something from there. So I finally put Partition
> Magic on it and am wondering what steps to take from there. Partition
> Magic also sees only the 30 Gb. This is an IBM Deskstar drive.
>
> Where do I go from here?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Denise
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