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Smitty103097

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Lost hard drive space?

I recently reformatted a friends hard drive.  It only has Windows 95 and Word 97 on it but says there is only 21.8 mb of space left.  I'm positive his hard drive is a 1.2 gig.  Is it possible that there is some space hidden somehow on his drive that I'm not seeing?  In Windows 95 Explore it shows only C:(hard drive) & D:(CD Rom) drives.
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rmarotta

Double-click My Computer and right-click on the C: drive icon.  Select Prooperties to view statistics of the drive.
What info is shown there?
Regards,
Ralph
Smitty,

Has you run FDISK on this hard disk ?
It looks like your friend's partition disk does not have 1.2 Gig.

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I did FDISK and it says there are no partitions.  It states the total disk space is 102 Mbytes.  I also tried rmarotta's suggestion and under c:\ properties it says there is 78.6MB of used space and 23.0MB of free space.

Could Windows 95 and Word 97 be using 78.6MB of hard drive space?


Go to run and type chkdsk. It will show how much drive it is seeing. If you have access to a program called Partition Magic you will be able to view the whole drive graphicly. You could try running fdisk at the run command and then press 4 to see partition info. If you had a compact install of Win95 and word then that could give you 78MB. If you find the partition info says you are only using part of the drive then you will need to delete the partition and remake it. Be sure to use the fdisk and format program for your version of Win95.
Do you have the make and model number of that hard drive?
If so, you can go here to view specifications on it:

http://www.blue-planet.com/tech/no-frames.html

Let me know if you need more.
Regards,
Ralph
CHKDSK says:  106,614,784 bytes total disk space
                4,136,960 in 83 hidden files
                  155,648 in 65 directories
               78,149,632 in 1,094 user files
               24,172,544 available on disk

                2,048 bytes in each allocation unit
               52,058 total allocation units on disk
               11,803 available allocation units on disk

              655,360 total bytes memory
              606,192 bytes free

It appears that everything is correct unless someone can see a problem.  I'm just surprised that Windows 95 and Word 97 are using up 78MB of space on his hard drive leaving him only 21MB left for other programs.  I thought maybe there might be some hidden partitions somewhere but I can't locate any.

Smitty, that is a very small drive to be running Win95.  I'm really surprised Windows runs well with a swapfile as small as can be allowed on that drive.
Hard drives are inexpensive now, so I would strongly recommend a larger one to get any serious use out of the Word97 program.
Regards,
Ralph
Smitty,
     It does sound like there is some hidden space.  You are pushing it for space though, you can install Windows 95 with about 60 meg, the OS will take about 41mb without to much extra stuff.  Word 97 I think takes about 23mb.  WOW I am surprized your friends computer isn't freaking....the swap space isn't very big.  It must have at least 16mb of RAM.  Well here is my suggestion.  Go get Partition Magic, you sould beable to fix the problem quick and easy.  Use version 2 or 3.  
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Penfold

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Why does everybody want to play with partitions?
The drive capacity is only 106MB, and 78MB are used.
There is nothing wrong..........
Ralph
Ralph,
If you read the top, the Drive was 1.2G before he ran a FDISK !
He has obviously ran FDISK and lost the larger side of the Partition.
As for playing with partitions....Hey they're fun !!!!!!!!
If he ran FDISK and don't see any partition other than the 106MB, than that's all he has. Nothing is hidden from FDISK. Partition Magic won't show anything else and can't help in this situation.
If you are absolutely sure that it is a 1.2G hard drive, then it's time to get a new one, since this one is old and becoming defective. In the computer world, sadly to say, any hard drive more than three years is getting old.
Also, don't be surprised that Windows is using that much space. Windows and its swap file can easily grow to more than 200MB when the computer is fully functional.
Finally, use SCANDISK instead of chkdsk for a better analysis of your hard drive. Do a complete scan with surface checks and tell us what you get. I'm guessing you will have bad sectors that are causing you these problems.
Smitty,

You said "I'm positive his hard drive is a 1.2 gig. "

If that's true, you have a problem with that drive, and I totaly agree with what datn told you.

If you're not positive, then there is nothing wrong here, and you should reject the proposed answer, because it won't fix what isn't broken!

Regards,
Ralph
Ralph,
       FDISK is not 100% all time.  I have a 4gig, and FDISK only saw 2gig, but Partition Magic saw it all.  Remember it is made by Microsoft........so you know its not 100%.
strongd,
That depends on which version of FDISK you run.
Versions that come with Win95B or later can access drives using large disk support (FAT32), up to 2 terabytes in size! (I haven't seen one that big yet)
You were probably using an earlier version of FDISK, or FAT16.(2GB Max.)
Ralph
I think I have a possible solution. Some techs when they set up a computer they will setup two partitions. The root partition is usually small, about 100mb. Here they will store the system files and the swap files. Everything goes in the extended partition. Peter Norton has suggested doing this in a number of books. Check to see if there is another partition on it.