Losing hard drive space

February 8, 2004 4:40 AM

I've just bought a new 80gb hard drive (Hitachi deskstar).
It shows up as 80gb in the bios, but only as 13gb in f-disk.
What's wrong, please?
posted by the cuban to technology (5 comments total)

Perhaps the fact that it's 2004 and you're using FDisk. :)

Seriously though, fdisk is pretty outdated, and is notorious for issues with larger hard drives. Get a copy of Partition Magic, or some such, and reformat/partition away. If you're installing Windows XP or a similar OS on the new HD, just use the setup CD, and Windows can auto size/create/format partitions to your liking during the install.
posted by Jairus at 5:55 AM on February 8, 2004

If you're going to use the drive as a single partition then you can disregard fdisk's mis-reporting the size. Go ahead and format it and it should work. If you want multiple partitions on the drive then you'll need either a commercial program like Partition Magic, as Jairus suggested, or use a linux boot disk (e.g. Tom's) and use the linux fdisk, which can handle larger drives.
posted by TimeFactor at 6:55 AM on February 8, 2004

Or Linux cfdisk, which many seem to feel has a nicer interface (well, for a text-based util).
posted by cyrusdogstar at 7:42 AM on February 8, 2004

If you're using Windows 2000/XP (and you're just adding the 80GB as a secondary drive), you can format and partition it via the existing Disk Management utility.

Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management
posted by Danelope at 11:03 AM on February 8, 2004

fdisk.exe cannot work with drives over 64 GB due to bugs.

Use this updated one instead (yes, that's my site). It's an unpacked copy of the windows update for fdisk. It will require windows 98 se bootdisks (available here, not my site).

Choice 2: Fdisk with another utility. This CD has MANY on it.

HTH!
posted by shepd at 11:32 PM on February 8, 2004