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KbearFlag for United States of America

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Windows shows incorrect free space on my new drive.

I installed a Maxtor 54610H6 45 G hard drive as a secondary master on my existing system. It was used, and had been used on a windows XP system. I am using Windows 98SE. It was recognized correctly in the bios at boot up. I used Fdisk to make one large partition. I formatted it in Windows and it came out showing it is 5 Meg capacity. Okay, that won't work well as a back up for my files. What do I do?
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tfjeff

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tfjeff

btw, before running the debug script on the hard drive, I would advise removing any hard drives that have any important data on them, so you don't accidently wipe out the partition information on an important drive.
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Ok, I tried the Powermax. I ran a full diagnostic, Ok, then a full low level format with Powermax, Ok. Now the drive is gone in Windows, no letter. I was going to run Fdisk and do a large single partition again. Should I format it in Windows? Or is there something I should do in DOS? Should I disconnect my primary drive, and run Fdisk from a floppy. If so what files should I copy? I wanted to ask first before I fry something. Thanks.
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the debug script that I linked to there will write 0's to the first 1000 sectors of the hard drive, at least that's what I'm told.  This has fixed this exact problem for me...it was my last resort before replacing the drive.
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Running lowlevel format of the powermax utility should have have already taken care of watzman's suggestions, so create your partition using fdisk (I suggest you create a extended partition with a logical drive inside, this will give you more flexibility with the drive letter). After a reboot, format the drive and you should be OK. If not, please give us some more info on your current hardware, and how your disks are connected.


One other thought, Windows 98SE came out in April of 99, I believe.  In may of 2000, there was an updated FDISK released by Microsoft to support larger hard drives.  You should get that version, and it should be the only version that you use.  It's a free download from the Microsoft web site.  It fixed some bugs and supported larger drives than previous versions, although I would have thought that 45 gigs would not have absoulutely required it.  But perhaps it is required.
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Ok, I used parts of a couple of suggestions. Tfjeff, I removed my main drive, I ran Powermax from a floppy, did a scan and a low level format  Ran FDISK from a custom floppy from www. Bootdisk.com and deleted all partitions, installed one partition. Formatted in Windows. All is now ok, thank you!
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Actually the accepted answer was Tfjeff at 300 points, and the assist to Watzman at 100 points. I don't know how they got backwards, if it is a problem, please tell me how to fix it.